UFC 253 Analysis: Israel Adesanya's Perfect Fight
Photo by Josh Hedges/Zuffa LLC
To commemorate his 100th professional victory in combat sports, UFC middleweight champion Israel Adesanya pitched a perfect game against the #1 contender in Paulo Costa. On the heels of a dour decision win over Yoel Romero that left many fans and pundits frustrated, Izzy found his way back into the good graces of viewers with an absolutely momentous performance and legacy-defining victory. It is very rare that a champion manages to handily shut down an undefeated surging contender, but Adesanya made it look so effortless that I find it difficult to imagine any middleweights on the horizon giving the kickboxer-turned-MMA alum a run for his money. Here’s how he did it.
Round 1
As I pointed out in our staff picks and predictions article, Paulo Costa is a defined pressure fighter who utilizes the cage as a proximity marker for his demolition zones. This is the basic rundown:
Opponents in the center of the cage = Mostly fencing with jabs and a few snap kicks to push opponents back.
Opponents near the fence = Stabbing jab and long straight shots to the body.
Opponents corralled along the fence = Go HAM.
It is notable that every one of Costa’s five UFC opponents had immediately and unceremoniously planted themselves along the fence from the beginning, allowing Costa to simply brim with confidence and walk them down. From the outset, Adesanya demonstrated a keen recognition of his opponent’s distance triggers and went to great lengths in prioritizing his own positioning.
Izzy keeps his wide stance even, staying light on his lead leg to check kicks. When he steps laterally to his left, he isn’t shuffling, but rather attempting to wedge his lead foot towards Costa’s centerline. Notice the subtle L-step to redirect as Costa attempts to feint his way in. When Costa pressures Izzy behind the black line, Adesanya immediately retracts his lead left leg, shifts backward at an angle before regaining his stance. Both directions (left and right) are open to for exits, and he remained cognizant of Costa’s committed cage-cutting tools throughout the duration of the fight.
When Izzy found himself on the outside of the Black Line of Doom™, he quickly flattened his stance and feinted both directions. He hop-steps to his right and Costa bites, attempting to track him down. Adesanya gracefully drifts out the opposite side. Consummate ring generalship.
Jack Slack tweeted the following immediately the fight, and I couldn’t have said it better myself:
A lot has been made of Adesanya’s depth of skill as an outside striker, and this was a showcase for exactly that. Izzy’s weapons were basic and reliable; most of his effective offense in the first round came from the calf-kick/jab changeup. It was the way Adesanya played both threats off each other, the way he subtly adjusted to Costa’s reactions, whilst maintaining his positioning that slowly forced Paulo out of his depth.
In the last Adesanya article I wrote, I discussed Izzy’s feinting triumvirate: hands, shoulders, hips. This sequence is slow, but it highlights everything that Adesanya wants from an opponent and how easy it is for him to get it. The half-steps from Izzy’s lead foot continually look for Costa’s centerline and they force Costa to think about a forward-moving threat. The feinted/throwaway jab establishes a major threat that Paulo has struggled with in the past. Adesanya continually adjusts his own positioning, while Izzy’s rear-foot continually angling rightward masks the inevitable low kick.
One of the reasons I thought Costa would be difficult for Adesanya was because he seemed poised to either ignore Izzy’s blistering feints (similar to Yoel Romero), or because he would respond to feints as if they were normal strikes. It is a perfectly viable strategy to react to feints with committed responses, because it disincentives opponents from feinting with impunity. Of course, it can be detrimental, attempting to respond to every single twitching feint with a maximum effort, but it can be reasonably effective in limiting the feinting output of an opponent.
Costa did the exact opposite. When faced with a bewildering opponent who sneakily masks just about everything he throws, Paulo second-guessed almost everything he threw. He was caught out completely bare (much to Adesanya’s delight), and instead resorted to a naked kicking contest on the outside versus a much better kicker.
While I’m listing things I previously anticipated, I also made note of Adesanya’s preference for orthodox fighters as opposed to southpaws. The closed-stance here muted Costa’s left body kick greatly, and it allowed Izzy to square his shoulders, seek the lead hand of his opponent, and spring into his jab.
If you’re curious what building off feints looks like, this is it. Adesanya throws a rear hip feint and Costa bites, immediately picking his leg up and turning his shin out to check. As Costa resets, Adesanya repeats the pattern, only this time he throws a kick behind the feints. Building off feints isn’t supposed to be a fast process. However, when done correctly, it can be deceptively damaging over time.
As the first round progressed, Adesanya’s feints began ramping up and Costa became less and less sure of his own distance. Everything flowed for Izzy. Feinting both the lead hand and the rear hand gave way to more anxious responses from Costa. As Paulo became more cognizant of the outside leg kick, Adesanya opened up the inside leg kick instead. As Izzy steps in with a body jab, Costa puts his hands up high as if to parry.
I won’t belabor the point any further, but it is important to understand why this worked as well as it did. Feints mean nothing without a threat established behind them and threats are doubly scary when opponents have to deal with more than one at a time. None of these strikes were particularly damaging on their own, but they were pesky and incessant. You can’t just ignore them forever, and it is notable that Costa’s main adjustment to these types of problems in previous fights has usually just been ‘push harder.’
Eventually, I expected Costa’s frustration to get the better of him. To his credit, he did attempt to push forward, but Adesanya came prepared.
Pay attention to Adesanya’s setup here. Standing orthodox, he feints his rear hip into a step before springing his hips into a kick from the opposing side. Izzy pulls his kick here and Costa attempts to rush forward with a hook. Repeating a sequence from earlier, Adesanya retracts his lead leg, angles backward to his left, before flattening his stance along the fence. One rear-handed shoulder feint, and Costa immediately backs himself to the center of the cage.
Here is the same setup with Adesanya going high this time. Pretty and tricky.
In the final moments of the round, Adesanya began finding his mark with a more diverse kicking arsenal, including a question mark kick and a snapping open-side body kick, but the groundwork had been effectively laid. In utilizing both angles of attack and planes of attack, Izzy had thoughtfully engrained threats into Costa without expending much energy at all. It was an annoyingly efficient round for the champion, and it demonstrated that a patented ‘slow start’ is worthwhile if it can be used to effectively earn some information.
Round 2
Despite a strong and productive first round, Adesanya remained aware of his opponent’s threats. Just because he had Paulo Costa feinted into oblivion, the discipline and craft never waned. If the first round was Adesanya’s best opportunity to gather information, then the second round was when ‘The Last Stylebender’ truly demonstrated how lethal a fighter he can be with the right arrangement of weapons at his disposal.
Adesanya feints Costa backwards. When Costa attempts to jab, Izzy immediately recognizes the threat, obstructs the lead hand, and angles off.
To be a bit more specific, here is a list of what Adesanya’s threats are accomplishing: The jab is forcing Costa to deal with a linear strike obstructing his forward movement. The left high kick is shelving Costa’s rear hand (since he needs it to block the kick), whilst preventing Costa from slipping outside. The lateral movement forces Costa to continue turning to face his opponent. The leg kick is attritional damage and it fucks up Costa’s stance. In analyst terms, what you’re seeing above is depth.
Costa pushes Adesanya back with a jab, and Adesanya immediately starts reangling on the outside. Shifting to southpaw on the backfoot, Izzy takes the inside angle to Costa’s lead foot, traps Paulo’s lead hand, and fires a left straight down the pipe. As Costa attempts to cut the cage to his right, Adesanya angles with him, maintaining the inside foot position + lead hand control. Izzy throws a left straight away to draw Costa’s outside slip before firing a left high kick. Israel immediately conditions and punishes Paulo in the span of roughly ten seconds.
Since I spent a decent portion of this article discussing the value of Adesanya’s feints, I might as well spare a few words on his preference for lead hand control. Plenty of analysts (myself included) have harped on the importance of hand-fighting, but in case we haven’t explained the importance of it, here goes: By fighting for control of an opponent’s lead hand, it acts as both a tactile gauge of distance (as in you can literally ‘feel’ how far an opponent is from you), and it obstructs an opponent’s arsenal. A jab-happy orthodox fighter getting their lead hand obstructed means that their most reliable tool is muted, and thus any attack they commit with is being filtered through a lack of a jab and/or a jab feint. Given Paulo Costa’s lack of comparative offensive depth, losing lead hand control was disastrous for him.
Adesanya begins layering in some shifts to further diffuse Costa’s sense of distance and expectation. While standing southpaw, Adesanya uses his right hand to obstruct Costa’s lead hand yet again. Simultaneously, Izzy takes a subtle step to his right, encouraging Costa to turn and follow. As soon as Paulo plants his left foot, Adesanya takes the inside angle again to open up the southpaw kick to the body. Costa attempts to counter with his own open-side body kick, but Adesanya has already flattened out along the fence, allowing him to turn his torso away from the kick. Izzy catches the incoming kick with his left arm, turns Costa onto the fence, and counters with a short left hand before angling out.
Costa was having a preternaturally difficult time entering the pocket safely, and his committed punch entries were all lumbering and predictable. This wasn’t difficult to deduce after the first round, but I can’t say that I expect Adesanya to demolish Costa so easily inside the pocket either. As the threats from the first round compiled and as Adesanya made way for even more threatening openings, Costa became desperate and his night was swiftly ended as a result.
Standing orthodox, Adesanya L-steps, encouraging Costa to attack his lead leg. Costa shuffles to kick Izzy low, but Adesanya immediately raises his lead leg up and catches Costa’s kick. Paulo shells up instantly, and plants his lead foot outside with the plane of Costa’s hips completely flat facing towards him. A short three-punch combination, and Izzy is already angling off once more. My friend and colleague Ryan Wagner described this exchange as ‘a great kicker versus an enthusiastic kicker’ and I agree with him.
Adesanya feints with his rear hand twice to enter the pocket. The first time, Costa anxiously tries to lean away from what he perceives to be a jab. The second time, Costa throws a jab. Izzy slips inside of the jab and herds Costa with his right hand. Adesanya’s right hand over Costa’s shoulder doesn’t land clean, but it doesn’t need to, because Costa’s positioning is now compromised. With his right foot wedged toward Costa’s centerline, Adesanya owns the positional dominance and the left hook closes the door, capitalizing on Costa’s broken positioning. The Brazilian was completely outfought by the time he went down.
The knockout here was eerily reminiscent of Adesanya’s legendary finish over former champion Robert Whittaker.
Almost the exact same sequence. Whittaker leads with a jab, Adesanya pulls off it this time, herds with the right, and puts him down with the fade-away left hook. The foot positioning, combination punching, and stirring accuracy are all present here. What you are seeing is a fighter with a frighteningly good understanding of their own distance and a deft application of how to manipulate that against unsuspecting opponents.
Conclusion
What more can be said? Israel Adesanya has a solid claim as the greatest middleweight in MMA history. Paulo Costa was supposed to be his ultimate trial, and Izzy figured him out so quickly that we’re left wondering why we ever assumed this could be competitive in the first place. It’s hard to overstate just how lopsided this victory was.
There may not be a plausible contender up next for Adesanya. Robert Whittaker and Jared Cannonier are presumably fighting for the next title shot, but the notion of either of them winning feels remote at best. A foray into light heavyweight is a potential option, but without the gravity of Jon Jones on the horizon, it could prove to be even less interesting than Adesanya continuing his middleweight regime. I can’t predict what is in the cards for Adesanya next, but I’m not sure I even care. As long as he keeps turning in performances like this one, I will happily watch him fight just about anybody until he hangs up the gloves for good.
The world of combat sports is a messy one, but to celebrate his 100th professional victory, Israel Adesanya turned in a masterpiece and a frontrunner for 2020’s performance of the year.