Israel Adesanya thinks he knows Robert Whittaker’s breaking point.
A middleweight title fight between Israel Adesanya and Robert Whittaker is on tap for this Saturday night’s UFC 271. A rematch between these two has been a long time coming, and now they will finally meet again.
Robert Whittaker feels he is at his best and has the game plan to beat Adesanya this time around, but Adesanya does not agree.
Adesanya is certain that Whittaker will be quitting in their upcoming fight and is predicting exactly when that will happen. He spoke to ESPN about the precise moment he feels he’ll take away Whittaker’s spirit.
“When he finds out he can’t grapple with me,” Adesanya said. “When he can’t outgrapple me. I want him to scramble with me. I really want to see. He’s a good scrambler. Even with the Romero fight, there’s certain positions in there where he was able to scramble. But man, you guys don’t understand. When I was young, I was the guy (who people said) ‘He’s got it. This guy’s gonna be great. And I always knew that about myself.”
There wasn’t much grappling in the first meeting between these two, but Adesanya thinks that will be different this time out. He ended Whittaker’s night early by KO at UFC 243, but the New Zealand native has strung together three solid wins since then. In a day when many champions get an immediate rematch when they lose their title, Whittaker instead to the scenic route back to a title shot.
Adesanya suffered his only loss recently when he fought Jan Blachowicz for the light heavyweight title. Whittaker thinks he can take some cues from Blachowicz and use his ground game over Adesanya. Adesanya is preparing for this and is ready to show that he can dominate on the ground as well.
Do you think Adesanya will be victorious once again against a grappling Whittaker?
