The 10 greatest UFC fights of the last decade (2010-2019)

2019: Israel Adesanya vs Kelvin Gastelum – UFC 236

Israel Adesanya edged out Kelvin Gastelum in a stone-cold classic.

UFC 236 was always going to be a huge show thanks to the presence of two interim title fights – one in the Lightweight division between Dustin Poirier and Max Holloway, and one at Middleweight between Israel Adesanya and Kelvin Gastelum. And while the Lightweight fight turned out to be excellent, Adesanya vs Gastelum surpassed all expectations to become an instant classic.

Early on the fight was all Gastelum; he found that he could nullify Adesanya’s timing and reach advantage by simply wading forward swinging, and he had the Aussie hurt in the first round, but by the second, Adesanya managed to find his range and began to tee off, hurting the former TUF winner on numerous occasions as the fight went into the later rounds.

By the fifth round, the fight was dead even – but somehow, Adesanya turned things up a notch and came out with renewed vigour, taking the fight to Gastelum to the point where the only thing that kept him in the fight was a simply insane chin. In the end, ‘The Last Stylebender’ saw his hand raised, but Gastelum earned almost as much respect for his sheer toughness.

This was a stone-cold classic fight, and while we don’t know how much it’s taken out of both fighters yet, it goes down as the best fight of 2019 – ahead of other tremendous battles like Yoel Romero vs Paulo Costa and Jorge Masvidal vs Nate Diaz.