Was Adesanya injured? Was DDP's win against Adesanya a fluke? Could he do it again?

Adesanya is 35 with over a hundred fights worth of mileage on him. Hes absorbed more than double the amount of strikes in the second half of his UFC career than he did in the first half too.

 

No. Adesanya did not look injured. He just has a lot of mileage on him. He is a top 2 middleweight of all time. I think the perfect time for Israel to retire would have been after beating Perreira.

 

Izzy isn’t anywhere as good as a lot of you people thought he was.

 

He is really, really good. But he excelled in a division of strikers.
It´s kinda funny how DDP keeps winning because of his ground game. His background is in striking but early on he embraced the ground game and now is the UFC champ because of it.
The Strickland fight was extremely close, but it´s clear that DDP won it because of his wrestling.

 

Eh, they were pretty even for the most part. But DDP´s ground game is what separated them that night. He has layers to his game that Izzy does not have and is clearly the superior martial artist.

 

This is the problem with martial artists with a world class striking base. We saw the same problem with Stephen Thompson when he lost to Woodley. The ground game, or at the least the threat of it, can either nullify your offense or exploit your lack of defense.

Developing a ground game is not easy. You can spend years training in jiu-jitsu and wrestling and still suck at it. Meanwhile, you're competing against guys who have been doing it since they were little kids or teenagers.

I always thought that Israel benefited from a middleweight division that was devoid of high-level grapplers at the time. He never had to fight a prime Rockhold, or Weidman. He's still had a damn good career, but we're seeing that he's not quite as good as many people thought he was. I also think he doesn't have that same fire that he used to have for fighting. He's had a long fighting career in kickboxing and mma. That can eventually take a mental toll on some guys.