Chris Curtis broke down why Sean Strickland’s win at UFC 293 wasn’t a product of Israel Adesanya having an off night.
On September 9, Strickland made history by dethroning Adesanya to become the new UFC middleweight champion. Shortly after the fight, Adesanya’s coach, Eugene Bareman, conducted a press conference and claimed ‘The Last Stylebender’ had an off night, furthering a conspiracy theory among some fans.
Meanwhile, Chris Curtis believes Adesanya lost because he couldn’t adjust to Strickland’s fighting style. During an interview on The MMA Hour, Curtis had this to say about his training partner’s win at UFC 293:
“In most combat sports, especially kickboxing and boxing, everything is predicated off of your jab. Everything sets up with your jab, so when he just takes that away from you, no, it’s not there, you can’t out-jab Sean. He’s going to win that battle. He’s either going to counter you or just make your jab pointless. Look at Izzy, he’s throwing jabs, he’s getting his arm blocked up high, a few times he’d throw, and Sean just bats his arm up and away.”
Curtis continued by further addressing those who believe Adesanya had an off night:
“So all that bullsh*t about Izzy looked different, no, you look confused like I looked confused, and everyone else looks confused when they spar Sean because it’s like, ‘What are you doing?’ No, that’s bullsh*t, I’ve seen this happen for seven years, and this is what he does.”
Chris Curtis knew Sean Strickland had a chance to defeat Israel Adesanya
Heading into UFC 293, there weren’t many people giving Sean Strickland a chance to dethrone Israel Adesanya. With that said, Strickland’s training partner, Chris Curtis, and head coach, Eric Nicksick, knew he had the skills to pull off the shocking upset.
During the same interview on The MMA Hour, Curtis had this to say about his belief that Strickland would emerge victorious in Australia:
“Sean is probably the toughest human being that I’ve met when it comes to fighting. I love fighting, he’s probably the only person I genuinely know who enjoys fighting more than I do. I knew he could win this fight, I didn’t think he would make it look that easy. I don’t think he thought that he would make it look that easy.”
Curtis continued:
“We all knew he could win, we were like, ‘Sean’s tough as nails, he’s patient, he’s aggressive, he can do this. He’s got to make it an ugly war and get Izzy to fight a dumb fight.’ No one ever thought that he would out-kickbox Izzy. I’m watching, and I’m like, ‘This is not what you trained, oh my God.’”
Sean Strickland’s win against Israel Adesanya will go down as one of the biggest upsets in UFC history. The question is, who will Strickland’s first title defense be against? The primary options are an immediate rematch against Adesanya or a new challenge against number two-ranked Dricus du Plessis.
Quotes provided by MMAFighting.
