- John McCarthy contradicts Dana White’s claim that Israel Adesanya wasn’t at his best against Sean Strickland at UFC 293
- “Big John” thinks there’s nothing wrong with Izzy and “Tarzan” beat him fair and square
UFC president Dana White thought Israel Adesanya looked slow and stiff against Sean Strickland at UFC 293, suggesting it could’ve been the reason why he lost his middleweight title. For John McCarthy, there’s no truth to that. If anything, Izzy was even the pacier fighter that night.
Dana got it wrong
During his Weighing In podcast, “Big John” outright rejected White’s assertion, suggesting that the UFC boss might favor champions based on their financial contributions to the company. McCarthy then pointed out that there was nothing wrong with Adesanya at UFC 293 and Strickland was just the better fighter in that fight.
“Bullsh*t. Dana can have his opinion,” McCarthy exclaimed. “You gotta understand, Israel is a moneymaker for the UFC. Of course, Dana’s gonna have a preference here in who his champion is because one makes big money and one right now is not that guy maybe, Sean will be that guy but to sit there and say he looked slow, he did not look slow, he did not look slow at all. And he showed he was faster than Sean Strickland.”
“Izzy is a six foot four, 185-pound fighter, he’s got a very long reach but the guys that give him problems are guys that can match that… the time and managing the range and deciding when the engagement is going to occur, when he can do that, he’s unbeatable because he’s so God damn gifted. He couldn’t do that against Alex, Alex crushed that on him and gave him problems and Sean in this fight, crushed that well. He was unable to control that range. Sean kept the pressure on he tried, he was working to try to control the range and every time Sean just walked right through… and just put shots on him that made him have to reset reset reset reset,” he explained.
Sean deserves his flowers
The former veteran UFC referee had officiated a wide array of UFC title fights and based on his assessment, Adesanya wasn’t overtrained against Strickland. McCarthy concluded that people should just accept that “Tarzan” outmatched Izzy with his style and he deserves credit for it.
“Izzy did not look over trained. If he looked over trained, he would have been much more tired because he took a ton of shots. He was the guy that was putting out way more energy in that fight so he was in shape. He was fast, he just got beat by a style and a guy that fought beautifully that night and now give it up for Sean Strickland,” McCarthy said.
As it stands, White is rooting for a Strickland vs. Adesanya rematch. On the other hand, the newly crowned middleweight champion didn’t bother revealing what he wants next as the UFC always gets to decide.
