Bulls and Matadors: How Jan Błachowicz subverted bloodsport expectations to certify his belt
Photo by Jeff Bottari/Zuffa LLC via Getty Images
Pre-fight Preamble
Lets admit it, as a punditry collective. Big Jan Błachowicz, the sitting light heavyweight champ coming into UFC 259 in Vegas at the weekend, was not meant to win this fight.
I certainly didn’t expect it. Having noted down some pre-fight thoughts, my ramblings were full of metaphors about how when it comes to bullfighting, it’s usually a foregone conclusion - the match is effectively a set-up. A dangerous one, where just occasionally, occasionally, the matador ends up with a bullhorn perforating his rectum, but ultimately the outcome is basically predetermined. The bull’s actions are just too predictable, the matador is just too nimble and well-prepared.
Essentially, Błachowicz was being seen as a worthy opponent - his ascent to the title had a hint of good fortune with Jon Jones’ departure but has been marked by a very obvious technical improvement in the last few years - but one who’s main advantage was likely to be size. Sure, he has a kickboxing background, and can grapple to a decent level, but, surely, he’s just a bit too lumbering to trouble Israel, right?
After all, Adesanya, his fêted opponent, has been lighting up arenas since his debut in Feb 2018, with very few hiccups. He attracted legions of fans (and fanboys) with a mixture of technique and style, advancing kickboxing’s standing in MMA in a big way. Fight after fight, he made fools of those who wished to challenge him; the likes of Brad Tavares, Dereck Brunson, Robert Whittaker and Paulo Costa were summarily dispatched, and with some ease. Kelvin Gastelum threw up some problems but he, too, ended up comprehensively battered and almost finished.
Adesanya was becoming something of a force in MMA.
To many, he was (and to be fair, still is) one of the best proponents of the striking arts in the UFC.
Well, even if I had considered some routes to a potential Błachowicz victory, I admit I hadn’t really given him much of a chance of taking them.
Boy, did he make me (and plenty of other pundits) look a little silly.
Expectations: subverted
Adesanya, and especially his camp - City Kickboxing, of New Zealand - are known adaptors. They gameplan for opponents very well. When Adesanya fought the likes of Brunson and Whittaker, the ways Adesanya approached and dealt with the two fights were very distinct.
Not to mention Adesanya himself is known to be a capable mid-fight adjustor (not that he has really needed to overcome a deficit in the UFC before, Gastelum fight excepted).
Instead, it was the somewhat unheralded, meat-and-potatoes striker in Big Jan who showed some genuinely impressive gameplanning chops to really push Adesanya on the feet, and drag him into dark waters elsewhere.
So let’s examine the striking aspect of this fight first, or to put it bluntly, the aspect in which Adesanya was meant to have the clearest of advantages.
The beginning of the bout was a cagey affair. Neither Adesanya or Błachowicz are particularly prone to rushing out of the gate; both of them have pretty good jabs for one, and like to use it.
What became very clear early on was that Jan, who has become rather notorious of late for his blitzes, was prepared to play a very patient game. He did not feel the need to rush Adesanya here, in the same manner that got him deaded versus heavy-hitting terror Thiago Santos, or helped win him the belt vs Dominic Reyes.
The first time he did try a little blitz, Adesanya showed he was prepared.
What Błachowicz was hell bent on doing was establishing a defensive base from the beginning. One of Adesanya’s favourite methods of setting a tempo that he prefers is via kicking. He’ll chop at a lead calf to disrupt a stance, stamp at a knee to halt or simply chop into his opponent’s thigh. His aforementioned opponents - Gastelum, Costa, even Romero - allowed Israel to land kicks almost at will.
Błachowicz checked the very first kick and basically kept that aspect of his defence tight the entire way through the rest of the bout. Israel rarely got a free leg kick in; it meant that Jan was not perturbed by one of Israel’s primary building weapons, and furthermore, his checks allowed him the time and space to counter said kicks.
Israel looked profoundly disconcerted by this.
One aspect that Israel had to his advantage in a largely, in my book, successful first round though, was his jab. He used it to intercept Jan moving forward a fair bit, and also allowed him some leeway when feinting with his hands early.
He also kicked into a cross;
…a combination that at least mildly flustered Jan.
It’s to his detriment that he didn’t attempt this style of attack more often, because Jan proved rather adept at checking and avoiding single shots; he was most vulnerable when Israel chained sequences of strikes together (I hesitate to use the term ‘combo’, because Israel is not quite the combinations-style striker of a Max Holloway or a Petr Yan; he tends to chain single-beat strikes together as he figures out where each one should land)
Jan however, showed something that not many of Adesanya’s opponents have managed to thus far; consistent and dangerous retorts.
While Adesanya probably won the first round through his cleaner offense and initiative, Jan was not cowed. He stayed patient, and began establishing his own threats such as;
…a solid double jab, which not only backed Israel up, but exploited his noted tendency to lean back by attacking not his elusive head, but his body.
And so, in round two, we began to see that rarest of sights, the momentum shifting back on Adesanya.
Błachowicz had been biting on Adesanya’s feints from the beginning; this is no surprise, almost everyone does. What Jan did very well was however, was metering out his responses appropriately, for the most part his bites consisted of a defensive movement. Wasteful in terms of energy, yes, but at least he knew that should the feint not be a feint, he’d covered his bases.
He also began countering well;
…and crucially, began throwing in combos .
Witness in the above clip, he also varies his strikes, up and down the body. This instance is also an example of Jan taking one of his more infamous tactics, the blitz, and modifying it for someone well prepared for it - he keeps it short, the form on his movements tighter.
And because Jan has now established that he can defend kicks consistently and counter well, he can allow for himself to relax; at no point does his performance take on Costa’s desperate lunging or Gastelum’s golem-like, take-punishment advancing.
On the flipside; Adesanya is nothing if not imaginative. The low-kicks were not as effective as he would have liked, so he resorted to front snap kicks, which worked very well, and mixing in the odd question-mark kick, which Błachowicz usually got his hands up for but at least kept him guessing.
By the time round three rolls around, and the mid-point approaches, the dynamics begin to change more dramatically. The obvious aspect of the grappling we’ll get to in a little bit, but let’s keep with the striking for now, since this is the last round that Israel can realistically claim he won.
The round begins in keeping with the previous two; Israel trying to feint Błachowicz into action, but not succeeding.
Suddenly, Israel is forced into a bit of a realisation;
Błachowicz manages to get Adesanya against the fence, and pulls his legs out, sits him down. However, Israel is able to use the cage to help him to his feet, twist out of a dangerous clinch and escape away from the perimeter. However, he is also rather forced into a close-quarters exchange of which he rather got the better, even backing Błachowicz up.
This is perhaps the moment that Israel realised that pocket exchanging need not be the anathema he perhaps thought. It was a sequence that required no feints, just a bit of speed and accuracy and commitment, and he won it.
By the end of round three Błachowicz is beginning to heave, visibly out of breath.
To me, despite what the scorecards and a fair few observers have noted, it seems feasible to suggest that Adesanya is two-rounds-to-one to the good. Despite having been taken down in this round for the first time, the grappling and clinch was handled with some urgency and the striking exchanges up close began to look like a viable tactic for the challenger.
Putting a Stamp on Victory
However, the championship rounds, appropriately, are where the tide turns definitively in Big Jan’s favour. So here I will deliniate the analysis a little and focus on the grappling.
Which is appropriate because it’s what Błachowicz did.
Not to put too fine a point on it; Israel Adesanya has absolutely no claim to have won the final two rounds, and therefore the title. Rounds four and five were absolutely defined by Błachowicz’s ability to time open-space takedowns, and once Adesanya was flat on his back and static, he had no real answer to Błachowicz’s top game.
The difference in his comfort between the two phases of fighting is notable, and perhaps showed a gap in preparation; the example given above of clinching against the cage in round three was hardly the only time it happened, but most times Adesanya was able to mitigate Błachowicz’s influence there, even turning Jan on occasion, and exiting on his own terms.
With the takedown, both the one above in round four and this one in the final stanza:
…Adesanya was caught out doing the same thing; leaning back avoiding strikes. This is notable for two perhaps worrying reasons;
First, while Błachowicz is not a prolific open-space takedown artist, he has shown an ability to punch into a level change before. In his decision win against Jared Cannonier he double-jabbed into a relatively clean blast double in open space.
Unlike Cannonier however, Adesanya was not able to scoot his hips out and give himself the necessary space to maneuverer to the fence or stand up. Whether this is a lack of research and prep on Adesanya’s point is hard to say, but what is noticeable is something that leads into the second point, which is that he got caught out by the same big thing twice.
This is something that basically never happens to Adesanya when the fight is standing and the strikes are flying. He learns and enacts.
In this case he had his striking defence subverted in the exact same way, which suggests a lack of ingrained wrestling instinct.
That’s not to say he is utterly inept on the ground, past fights prove otherwise (his leg triangle attempts vs Gastelum, for example), but once there his lack of experience really tells.
During the round four grounding, he showed signs of knowing how to respond. He tried turning his hips to escape half guard, he was fairly successful in his stalling tactics, and he largely managed to mitigate damage to himself while on his back.
But he was not able to improve his own position at all; this is likely where the difference in weight (maybe as much as 15-20lbs) really made itself known. The weight plus Błachowicz’s not-inconsiderable grappling chops meant Israel was totally neutralised on the ground.
Almost as an aside, round five started with some action on the feet, in which Adesanya showed the renewed urgency to throw in sequence up close which allowed for his success in round three; also, Błachowicz was breathing extremely heavily, and it seemed as if Adesanya could attack the body and keep his distance (and his hips safe) he may be able to eke an advantage yet again.
Unfortunately, for his sake, he was not, and this second spell on the ground was even less dynamic than the first.
Takeaways
Błachowicz has ratified beyond all doubt that he is a deserving champion. Light Heavyweight is an extremely shallow division and it may have been easy to disregard his achievement before UFC 259, but with this win over perhaps the best ring general in the UFC at the moment, with such a lauded kickboxing game, Błachowicz left no doubt who had the better all round game in the cage that night.
The even nature of the fight when it was standing should also dispel any idea that the weight difference played an overwhelming factor; Big Jan had to work his way into the wrestling positions that won him the fight. Israel’s length, speed and, yes, strength meant he could not just bully his way to the ground.
As for Adesanya, this loss is chastening in the extreme. But it does not seem like it should be entirely discouraging; given a hypothetical re-match, there is little reason he could not win it.
For one thing; drill open-space takedown defence. That would be the priority.
When it comes to striking though, there seem one or two areas where Israel could potentially have done better.
Rounds one through to three were an oddly ‘chaste’ stretch for Israel. He threw a lot of feints that could have been committed punches.
Most notably, he seemed to leave a lot of body kicks on the table; he would step in with a kick feint, Jan would cover his head, leaving the body open, and Israel would merely step through on that raised leg. Worse, he wouldn’t punch once in range either.
And easy as it is to say from cage-side, from round three Błachowicz was gasping for air - his cardio is notoriously fragile - it seems that had Israel had the confidence in his sequence striking earlier he could have pressed his cardio advantage earlier, as he seemed to be attempting in round five.
This would have meant deviating from his very successful standard style of course, but Błachowicz had rather neutralised that from the very beginning.
He fought the fight of his life, and on this night of organised bloodsport, the bull outsmarted the matador, and left us pundit types with a good amount of humble pie to devour.