Israel Adesanya and Alexander Volkanovski left UFC 276 with belts still strapped around their waists, and it really wasn’t ever in doubt. The two dispatched Jared Cannonier and Max Holloway with ease on Saturday night, capping off a stacked International Fight Week offering that also featured an array of standout performances from some of the best up-and-coming talent in the sport. Let’s take a look at our top five lessons learned.
1. There is something missing. It’s difficult to argue the contrary at this stage. Israel Adesanya managed to put together another convincing title defense Saturday night. He outclassed Jared Cannonier, in a fight that was not competitive but it was still the UFC’s third consecutive middleweight champion. His audience was left with thinly disguised words such as “tactical”, “technical”, and “tactical” to describe the experience. It was fighting game’s equivalent to calling boring a performance, but respectfully. One is an exception. It is not a coincidence to do it twice. Are you able to do it three times? That’s a trend.
Adesanya was furious at the post-fight criticisms, but truth be told, Adesanya hasn’t had many memorable moments since his defeat to Jan Blachowicz in the two-division. Adesanya’s UFC reign is now five title defenses deep, and there’s maybe one or two defenses actually worth rewatching, depending on your mileage for the Whittaker rematch. And to be fair, Adesanya is obviously not alone in shouldering that responsibility. Tango is a two-person sport. Cannonier, like previous challengers, was frozen by Adesanya and the gravity of each moment. Cannonier found a rhythm that allowed him to win a fight and be safe. It is what it is.
Adesanya should not care about our entertainment. He’s a counterstriker and the UFC middleweight king; the onus isn’t on him to do anything but win. He’s still getting paid more than anyone in the UFC not named Conor McGregor, and he’s still achieving the MMA endgame at the end of the day: Escape victorious and unscathed.
But these things add up. “The Last Stylebender” arrived at the belt in 2019 being hailed as MMA’s next breakout star. His fight against Kelvin Gastelum was the Fight of the Year. His follow-up at UFC 243 was one of the most impressive torch-passings in recent memory. His performance was both theatrical and violent. The former can still be seen in Adesanya’s incredible tribute to WWE’s Undertaker, which he performed on Saturday. But the latter? It’s hasn’t been true for two years now — and there’s a real danger that Adesanya’s lack of highlights could begin limiting his ceiling as a star. Anderson Silva was able to run his Cote/Leites/Maia, and he also included the Forrest Griffin jamboree. This kept us coming back.
I just wonder what the tipping point might be. The casual fan may get burned once or twice on Adesanya events and still return for more. But once that number starts creeping into three or four times in a row where they’ve been sold a bill of goods only to see another listless snoozer for $75 like UFC 276, at a certain point, they’ll inevitably stop believing Adesanya when he promises that next time will be different and he’s going to enact his own version of Silva-Griffin. Maybe Alex Pereira is the guy to break the slump. He seems to me like that. Either way, we’ve reached a palpable crossroads with Adesanya, and if he’s going to become the superstar he appeared destined to be, something is going to have to change.
Because whenever you have fans flooding out of the arena en masse in the middle of your marquee main event on your marquee week, it’s not a great look.
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2. Alexander Volkanovski is the No. 1 pound-for-pound fighter in the world.
I was afraid to say it before UFC 276. I’m not any longer.
It’s impossible to overstate how important Saturday was for the UFC featherweight champion. For the past two years, the shadow of Max Holloway has chased Volkanovski like a dark cloud. No matter what Volkanovski did, no matter who he dispatched and how dominant he became, the conversation inevitably reverted back to Holloway and what played out at UFC 251. I was guilty of it myself. That disrespect has been forgotten forever.
From pillar to post, Volkanovski’s supremacy was never in question at UFC 276. The champ delivered an outstanding, lasting performance. A masterclass. A stunning victory over Volkanovski, one of the greatest featherweights ever to live. This is also the second consecutive time Volkanovski has pitched an impeccable game within four months. His improvement in every fight continues to be astounding and he’s proven multiple times over now that he long surpassed the field at 145 pounds. The Volkanovski age is here, and it has been for a long time. Some of us took longer to see it than others.
Which takes me back to his case for pound-for-pound No. 1.
Kamaru Usman has been the knee-jerk answer since Khabib Nurmagomedov’s retirement, but stack up their records and it’s a legitimate debate. Volkanovski has less UFC wins (12-0 compared to Usman’s 15-0) and less title defenses (four to Usman’s five), but, at least on my ballot, his strength of schedule and level of peerlessness nudges him above. Because for as good as Colby Covington is, Usman has no rival of Holloway’s caliber; similarly, Volkanovski has no gimme title defenses in the vein of Usman’s series with Jorge Masvidal.
To be clear, this is not an accusation against Usman. He’s clearly an all-time great. There’s no wrong answer here and valid arguments can be made in favor of both men. It’s simply an endorsement of how remarkable of a champion Volkanovski has become.
We are witnessing incredibleness in all forms, people. Appreciate it.
3. Remember everything I wrote earlier about Israel Adesanya?
Alex Pereira can help.
Pereira was undoubtedly the breakout star of the UFC’s Super Bowl weekend. Pereira handled Sean Strickland as a man on mission. It was a baffling strategy by the American — trying to walk down and out-strike the better striker — and he got appropriately blown up for his poor choices. Pereira’s subsequent shots were particularly nasty. This is the precision of someone who just last year gave up his title as GLORY champion. It is a common theme in our conversations that we should own the moment. UFC matchmakers teed Pereira up, and he knocked it 500 feet into the bleachers.
Adesanya has been barraged by questions about his old kickboxing rival for years now, but things really came to a head this week in Las Vegas. Pereira was the one who made the champ go to Las Vegas without him hearing all about it. That chatter seemed to frustrate Adesanya at least twice. At Wednesday’s media conference and Thursday’s press conference, Adesanya demanded information on whether Pereira’s accusers had ever seen any of his past kickboxing matches.
But you know what? The people were actually paying attention. If I can peel back the curtain for a second, every ounce of content related to the Pereira-Strickland fight or the Pereira-Adesanya rivalry did numbers that legitimately blew me away this past week. I knew there was interest, but I didn’t foresee a level of interest like this. If we’re talking about the fight to break Adesanya out of this championship malaise, Pereira is mana from heaven. It’s obvious Adesanya needs a dance partner who’s going to be aggressive and who’s not going to be frozen by his wizardry. Pereira has sledgehammers in all four limbs and is the only man in the middleweight division who can meaningfully call scorecard over the champion.
If Adesanya was already annoyed by the number of times he was reminded that Pereira is 2-0 over him, imagine how fired up he’ll be by the time this one comes around? This fight is Izzy’s next level. This is the one that can inject the heat back into his championship reign.
It’s also a matchup that, at least on paper, could very well feature the highest level of combined striking pedigree for a championship fight in UFC history.
Adesanya vs. Pereira 3 was always destined to happened. It couldn’t come at a more welcome time. Bravo, UFC matchmakers! Now let the countdown begin.
4. We are in the middle of an exodus from the old guard.
In the last four weeks, the MMA community has said goodbye to Joanna Jedrzejczyk and Felice Herrig. Eddie Wineland and Sarah Kaufman have also been gone. Now, Jessica Eye and Donald Cerrone are leaving. All these things happen in waves. Cerrone leaves behind the best legacy. Although “Cowboy” didn’t win a UFC championship and was not competitive in his one attempt at it, he was an original fighter. Mr. Mr.
From the moment Cerrone stepped into the UFC in 2011, you knew exactly what you were going to get from him. Anywhere from 3-5 times a year, “Cowboy” was going to show up in his luxury RV to give someone hell — and win or lose, by the end of the night, without fail, he’d be pleading for the chance to do it all over again. From 2011-20, Cerrone competed at least three times a year in every year but one. In six of those years, he rattled off at least four fights. It’s impossible to achieve that level of consistency at all levels. This is almost a miracle. Yet even with that massive sample size, you can counter the number of snoozers on Cerrone’s ledger with a single hand.
*]There won’t be another Cowboy. He was one of a kind. He won’t be disappointed. When it happens, it’ll be well-deserved.
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Photo by Carmen Mandato/Getty Images
5. Outside of the marquee three, UFC 276 stood out as a celebration of MMA’s next generation, with an undercard that showed off a youth movement in full effect.
Because folks, the young guns came to play.
All but one of the up-and-coming intrigues passed their respective tests at UFC 276 — Dricus Du Plessis, Ian Garry, and Maycee Barber each leveled up in a noticeable way, and I remain convinced that Andre Muniz may actually have been the second-best middleweight on Saturday’s whole damn card. Soon enough, he’ll be able to fight for a title shot.
Sean O’Malley was the lone outlier, as his prove-it fight against Pedro Munhoz ended prematurely due to an accidental eye poke. But since we have limited space here, I want to focus mostly on Jalin Turner, because my goodness, “The Tarantula” made the kind of statement that is impossible to ignore. Turner was taking the quiet road through UFC until Saturday. It had been a path of ultraviolence and tranquility a la Vicente Luque. He snuck into UFC 276 on an under-the-radar streak of four straight first-round finishes and appeared to be coming into his own since dropping back down to 155 pounds. Brad Riddell seemed to be ready for the next step.
Safe to say, his 45-second romp spoke volumes.
*Legitimate, world-class lightweights have tried to drag Riddell to Hell. Turner handled the matter faster than I could run down the street checking my mail. Probably with more ease, too. I’ve been singing Turner’s praises for years, but now it feels as if the world is paying attention. The 27-year-old carries absurd size and length into the cage for the lightweight division (6-foot-3, 77-inch reach), and he actually knows how to use them, which is a rare trait for someone still figuring themselves out. With his speed, timing, preternatural finishing instincts, and multi-faceted offensive arsenal, Turner is the truth. He called his entry into the rankings “inevitable” on Saturday. He’s right.
“The Tarantula” may have taken a moment to find his sea legs in the UFC, but he’s here now, and he’s going to be a problem at 155 pounds for a long time to come. Let’s give him the Rafael Fiziev against Rafael dos Anjos lossr next week and kick this up into high gear.
