Israel Adesanya expects a new middleweight king to be crowned at UFC 297 this weekend.
Sean Strickland (28-5) will defend his strap against Dricus Du Plessis (20-2) in the UFC 297 main event on Jan. 20 at Scotiabank Arena in Toronto. While Adesanya respects Strickland, having lost to him, “The Last Stylebender” believes du Plessis will be crowned champ via submission.
“I’m going to go with Dricus,” Adesanya said on his YouTube channel. “Is it going to go the distance? I’m going to say no. Not that I don’t respect Sean or his skills; the guy beat me. Of course, I respect his skills. I’ll say [submission]. He’ll submit him.”
While Adesanya was originally scheduled to defend his strap against du Plessis at UFC 293 this past September, Strickland replaced an injured “Stillknocks” on short notice. “Tarzan” shocked the world with one of the best defensive striking displays of recent times and went on to score a massive upset win via decision.
Adesanya has since teased a long hiatus, retracted on that, and doesn’t appear to have a clear timeline in mind for his return. However, the former champ will reportedly be seated Octagon-side when the American defends his strap against du Plessis.
“Dricus is going to try to wrestle him. Stand up in the beginning, do his off-beat rhythm; all that stuff. He might get jabbed in the first round by Sean and then have to really switch to the grappling because Sean’s jab is underrated. I never underestimated it but it’s underrated and I figured it out. It didn’t take me long to figure it out after the fight. In the fight, I had some other sh*t going on that I wasn’t able to figure it out, I was worried about some other stuff self-consciously to do with me, not to do with him.”
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