Robert Whittaker thinks Israel Adesanya looked in top form at UFC 305, but Dricus Du Plessis was too powerful.
Du Plessis (22-2 MMA, 8-0 UFC) retained his middleweight title when he submitted Adesanya (24-4 MMA, 13-4 UFC) in Round 4 of their UFC 305 headliner. Whittaker’s most recent loss came to Du Plessis by TKO, and he’s still baffled by how well the South African is able to perform.
“There’s a method to his madness – like, I’m making light of it and making it funny, but the dude is a weapon,” Whittaker said on his MMArcade Podcast. “He’s a true warrior. I can say that firsthand because he beat me right with the same cumbersome, throwing punches. It’s funny: I saw the same moment Adesanya had in his fight that I had in my fight, and it was somewhere in the first round where you think you see the punches, you move out of the way of the punches, and you realize, like, ‘He’s slow.’
“I can see them, like, ‘I’ve got this.’ It’s almost like you’re thinking, ‘This is too easy. I can see everything.’ And then, all of a sudden, he hits you. Then he starts climbing on you when he starts closing that gap a little bit more, like he starts – what, risking it a little bit more – like lunging into his shots, and he closes that inch that you thought you were safe by a little bit. Then there’s the factor of his power.”
After a back-and-forth three rounds, Du Plessis was able to lunge forward and stun Adesanya with a few shots, before jumping on him for the rear-naked choke submission.
Whittaker broke down the fight-ending sequence.
“In that last exchange before the submission, Adesanya took some heavy shots,” Whittaker said. “Adesanya’s got a great chin. He does – b*stard. He took those shots. … Dricus saw that, too – pushed it, got the takedown, and then jumped on the back straight away. Like, good instincts. He said he trained for that transition.
“It looks good, but that’s just a testament to his power because his power is what got him the chance, the opportunity. There’s so much to dissect and so many what ifs, you’d have to ask him. But man, to sum it all up, I think Adesanya looked outstanding. Dricus is just a warrior, and I understand what you need to do to beat him. You need to be ready to leave it all there.”
For more on the card, visit MMA Junkie’s event hub for UFC 305.
