UFC 236: Holloway vs. Poirier 2 - Predictions and Picks

#2 Kelvin Gastelum vs. Israel Adesanya

Can Israel Adesanya pick apart Kelvin Gastelum?

Like the other interim title fight on the card, there’s logic behind this one too. After defeating former champ Michael Bisping and top contender Ronaldo Souza, Gastelum was all set to face champion Robert Whittaker for the Middleweight crown in February, only for Whittaker to be sidelined with a major health issue – a ruptured bowel and hernia.

On the same night, meanwhile, Adesanya fought legendary former champ Anderson Silva and beat him to earn a title shot of his own.

With Whittaker still on the shelf then, it makes perfect sense to match Gastelum and Adesanya for an interim title, with the winner facing ‘The Reaper’ when he’s ready to return.

And this is a truly fascinating fight, too – how will Gastelum’s mix of wrestling, boxing and pressure-fighting deal with a man who’s clearly one of the best counter-strikers in MMA, but is also relatively inexperienced at the top level?

For his part, Adesanya has been perfect in 5 UFC fights thus far. He’s a wildly unorthodox striker, using his movement, angles and pinpoint accurate shots to take out opponents with punches, knees and kicks. Like Anderson Silva, it’s very tricky to work out what exactly he’s going to do, and that makes him far trickier to work out that it initially seems.

In terms of how he’s done thus far, he was always going to beat Rob Wilkinson, his debut opponent, and realistically Silva was always a good match for him stylistically too, given his deterioration and similar style to ‘The Last Stylebender’. It’s far more interesting to look at his other three opponents.

Adesanya struggled against the takedowns and clinch of Marvin Vettori, doing just about enough to outpoint the Italian. He was far better in picking apart the veteran Brad Tavares, and then put on his best showing to date by knocking out Derek Brunson in the first round. I’d still suggest however that he hasn’t been properly tested by a top wrestler.

Tavares is more of a jack-of-all-trades type – someone that a specialist like Adesanya would always give difficulties to – while Brunson never got his wrestling going as he was simply too overzealous, just as he had been in his past fight with Robert Whittaker. So can Gastelum be the wrestler to really test Adesanya on the ground?

I’m not convinced, to be honest. Sure, his wrestling was the area that brought him his initial success – it was his nasty top game and submissions that won him the 17th season of TUF back in 2013 – but he’s never been the type to shoot blast double legs like a Yoel Romero, and more recently he’s gotten more success from his striking – it was that game that got him past Bisping and Jacare and almost allowed him to defeat Chris Weidman in 2017.

I admit I could be very much overlooking Gastelum’s overall game here; he’s excellent in all areas and his cardio allows him to be relentless and push a horrendously tough pace for his opponents to keep up with, but I worry about how he’ll deal with the unorthodox movement, angles and striking of Adesanya.

I also worry that he’ll be too aggressive for his own good in this fight, coming forward and playing right into Adesanya’s hands.

I’m going with the Stylebender here; I think he’ll come undone once he faces off with a more cerebral fighter like Whittaker, or a more physically imposing wrestler like Romero, but I don’t see Gastelum being quite good enough on any level to deal with that flashy striking style.

Sure, he’ll give it a good go, but in the end I think he’ll walk into something nasty and Adesanya will finish him off from there.

The Pick: Adesanya via second-round TKO