By Akinwale Kasali
Nigeria’s Ultimate Fight Championship sensation, Israel Adesanya, has recorded his first ever defeat. He was beaten by Jtan Blachowicz who secured a unanimous decision victory to retain his light heavyweight title at UFC 259 on Saturday night at the UFC Apex in Las Vegas.
Blachowicz was caught in a high-octane kickboxing chess match early but decided to commit to taking down Adesanya in the final two rounds to earn scores of 49-45, 49-45 and 49-46. It prevented Adesanya from becoming a two-division champion and proved that the Polish fighter is the king of the 205-pound division.
“I won the fight and that’s it, but it was a tough fight,” Blachowicz said of his first title defense after defeating Dominick Reyes for the vacant title last September. “Thank you, Izzy, for this fight. It was a pleasure for me to fight against someone like you, but ‘and still’. I’m happy. I’m happy that I can be the first to beat him, one of the best in the world.
“I’m a true champion, I deserve what I got. It was a hard job for me tonight, but I do my best. We did almost everything, what we prepared for him in the gym we did in the fight. I’m happy. I won the fight and what we do works in the fight.”
In another development, Amanda Nunes once again proved that she is arguably the greatest mixed martial artist on the planet — male or female — with an utter wipeout of Megan Anderson. After hurting her early with a right hand, Nunes swiftly went in for the kill and sunk in an armbar to get the easy first-round submission.
“I like the challenge,” Nunes said. “In my life, I was always like that, challenging myself every time. If you don’t want a challenge, you’re in the wrong sport. I picked MMA for a reason. I’m here, I’m a champion and I’m defending these belts. I’m going to be here for a long time.”
In the third title fight on the card, Aljamain Sterling became the UFC bantamweight champion in disappointing fashion when Petr Yan was disqualified for an illegal knee in the fourth round of their title showdown. Yan was ahead on the scorecards before he made the inexplicable mistake of firing a knee on a downed Sterling. With Sterling unable to continue, the fight was called off and the #1 contender ended up being crowned the champion.
“Everything I worked for to this point and to have the fight go like that… I thought the fight was very close, I thought I was down two rounds,” Sterling said. “That’s not the way I wanted to win. That’s not the way I envisioned this.
“I just took the belt off. I was trying to continue even being like that, I was in a bad shape and it would just have been ego taking over and just to get further punishment.
“The ref told me I was down. I don’t know. I understand that there is some heat, some bad blood a little bit, but it’s all rivalry”, Blachowicz said.
