This past weekend, Israel Adesanya successfully defended his middleweight championship with a unanimous decision over Robert Whittaker at UFC 271. The win was Adesanya’s fifth undisputed championship win, and in the aftermath, he received props from another five-time, five-time, five-time, five-time, five-time champion: WWE Hall of Famer Booker T.
Booker T, who lives in Houston, attended UFC 271 as a media member, which briefly caused Adesanya to fanboy out for a moment, but Adesanya wasn’t the only one to be excited. Speaking with Ariel Helwani on Monday’s episode of The MMA Hour, the WWE Hall of Famer was equally as impressed by the middleweight champion.
“Izzy wanted to pay tribute to Booker T. It just allows me to know how he felt as a child growing up. I hope one day to inspire like I did,” Booker T stated. You could see he loved the game. It was obvious that he loved professional wrestling and entertainment. He is a performer. He is the Muhammad Ali in MMA. He’s an incredible talent and a rare find.”
Booker T called Adesanya the favorite fighter, and was complimentary about his fight at UFC 271,. Despite many critics pointing out that he had given a less dominating performance than he did in his encounter with Whittaker.
” “It was close,” Booker T stated. It was a tight fight, but I can’t say that it wasn’t. It was very strategic. You could tell Whittaker went and changed a whole lot in his game, and that he didn’t want to go out the same way he did in the first fight. It was obvious that Israel was cautious in his approach. It was just a technical fight, but that’s the way fights are. Each fight will not be a knockout miracle. Every fight is not going to be that fight where we look back in history and say, ‘Man, it was great!’ The fighter is all about walking out with a W.”
Adesanya was able to accomplish this feat, and is now a middleweight champion. With a 22-1 record, Adesanya is undefeated in the middleweight division and already stands second all-time in UFC middleweight title defenses, behind only Anderson Silva.
Next Adesanya is likely to defend his belt against Jared Cannonier who won the fight on Saturday by knocking out Derek Brunson in round 2. And when it happens, Booker T is predicting that Adesanya will have then successfully defended his belt five times.
” A puncher’s chance [is what Cannonier has],” Booker T stated. “Every fighter has a chance when they go in that octagon. You go back to Matt Serra — no one ever thought in a million years that he was gonna win that fight, but he went in there with a puncher’s chance and that’s all it took. One big punch.
“Cannonier is able to win this fight simply because he’s an animal. He won’t quit. Brunson had that fight won. On all scorecards, Brunson had that fight won, but that’s what you cannot predict in the fight game, is how it’s going to end up if you don’t get that guy out of there, and Cannonier proved it. Cannonier will have to fight Izzy because he isn’t going to stay in one place at all times to get hit. He’s also going to be constantly on the offense. This is the issue with Izzy .”
