UFC 248: Inside the Octagon - Adesanya vs Romero

On today's show we look at the exciting middleweight title fights at UFC 248 between current champion Israel Adesanya and challenger Yoel Romero. This is the latest dive into his first offensive after his sensational knockouts of Robert Whittaker last October. The flamboyant Kiwis' next goal is to build. legacy of him as one of the greatest mixed martial artists of all time in Romero, however, the champion faces one of the most fearsome fighters to ever grace the

octagon

with a high level of nitro packed with devastating knockouts. The soldier of God will stop at nothing to finally achieve it. his hands on the UFC gold hello and welcome to the UFC inside the

octagon

alongside Dan Hardy and today we will see some middleweight madness as current champion Israel Adesanya seeks to defend his title for the first time against the human specimen.

That's Euro Romero, damn it, right away, I mean, Israel understands that his rise has been phenomenal, two years shy of two years, in fact, to become champion, but this is why all of you Romero , it's almost like I chose it if you listen a lot. his interviews and that's a scary perspective, ideas and I have a lot of respect for him for taking another fight, first of all, John, a very happy birthday to you, I don't think I feel like you're Ramirez, I told you his secret. because you don't look over 60, I mean, it's very impressive, so yeah, I mean, you lost respect for Addison, for taking this fight, I mean, it really wasn't necessary because Ramirez wasn't in a position to that we would consider him to be the number one contender right now, but it's Yoel Romero, he has that presence and that's that aura around him that anyone who fights him is going to have a tough night and no one has made it look easy to win or lose and no one has ever made it look easy.

Adesanya is taking this fight because he wants to show everyone that he can beat your rosemary easier than everyone else. I just respect him for taking on that challenge because getting to the 25 minute distance with your rosemary or stopping him in the middle is incredibly impressive. and that to me is a great credential on his record, yeah, I'm not sure if I'll give him my mortgage when it's because he's coming in with some risky ones there, but obviously those guys feel like they have the stress of beating. This guy is a very exciting fight, in fact, a couple of things we all know is that your Romero is years older, but it doesn't seem to matter, it really doesn't, so I'm not reading too much into what we had. the taller man and a Senya are built very differently, that will give him a reach advantage which as the striker will obviously play in his favor, yes absolutely, I mean you know height and rishis will really play into his advantage basically because the way he fights, you know, keeping people at the end of their limbs, he's very, very good at that and managing that distance, which we'll get into the only thing I'll say about your Ramiro, although I mean at six feet seventy-three and a half.

The reach in inches is not huge for a middleweight, but because he is very fast and explosive. I mean, now you know what a six is ​​for every lead when you can do zero to sixty and you know whatever, she takes it away so we can nullify a lot. those achieve advantages just by putting their foot on the accelerator, yes that is where in my opinion Sonya is challenged and how she deals with that attack, we have a perfect 80 nano fighter, but he has great experience in professional kickboxing and boxing professional. On the other side we have, of course, the former world champion and Olympic medalist, but this guy uses a lot of his experience and we talk about it because Alice or the fans will always recognize the fight of all of you, Romero, but I think I calculated that they took it. falling or is he used to knockdowns ten times in all of his five round fights throwing is not much for an Olympic fighter no it is not it is not and I'm not sure if that's more impressive or not because obviously Adesanya we know what is. he's good and he builds his game around that hitting ability, your Romero, we know he has this ace card in his pocket that he doesn't seem to use very often, when we see him use it, it's like an explosive double at the end of the He likes the round like an Apollo Costa fight, yeah, so it's almost like it's a safety net for him.

The fact that he has this athleticism and this power has translated into a very, very successful striking career. He is not as clean and crisp as he would assign him. For you, it's very, very different in the way it approaches and a sign that you would dismantle, it will hit your head on the glasses in the front row and that speed that it has, as well as the speed that it has, I mean, has a limited set of hitting skills. To be fair, it's a limited skill set, but that limited skill set involves jumping on your knees and you know, I mean tremendously powerful punches and flurries against the fence, I mean, although he doesn't have the credentials and maybe the ability of hitting that out of 10 that he has it does not mean that it is not as impactful, I mean, they are tied for the third place with the most takedowns in the history of middleweight and one would think that their statistics would favor wrestling more, but yes, as You said, he didn't.

I don't really use it mainly because it's not necessary so far and I think Romero is improving, he's evolving and I'm sure we'll touch on that as we move things along and stick with Romero because I think he's got a great job, that body of city ​​kickboxer, next paragraph, so the city kickboxing guys have a lot to work with and although I just said there have been some changes in a big way, I'm not really sure that Romero really knows what's going on to do. do every time he goes in there, I don't feel like he's a flat guy, he just has a lot of feelings and this is where the challenge is for the city kickboxing guys in a sign, very good use, looking at what's in front them.

He reads those movement patterns, sees the predictability and then starts exploiting it. What we know about your Romero is that predicting that unpredictability is almost impossible. I mean, he looks at this as a fake front kick to the back. Yeah, I love it, like a hook kick. They are not the type of techniques that you take to a medalist wrestler with a flabby armpit to the mat that you have. I tell you what the teacher would teach you. you teach someone you teach them a double cross jab, which is what we started to see him use more in his later career, in the beginning it was about rocket fuel, it was about getting people out of the way and you don't want to All of you, Ramiro , chasing them around obstacles, around bombs, because everything hits them with full power and to try to shut this down, try to control it, try to put a fire blanket on it, I mean, Rockhold is doing everything they can.

Hold this Thai clinch, but you know, hurt your ribs in the process. Everything he does is damaging him because everything is 100% power at maximum speed. I just feel like these flurries are the biggest danger for Adesanya and what Addison needs to do is not hang around. within range and just allow this to happen if at any point you see that tidal wave generating that momentum rising through your Romero, get out of the way, yeah, get out of the way, let it get it out of your system because if you didn't look at that That was it, it was two rounds of kickboxing against Machida as if he played kickboxing for two rounds and Machida went out in the third round.

I was like, yeah, I've had enough of this, now I'm done inside, you know, in a few seconds, I've decided. He wanted to take him down, he's got it and Machida is unconscious mmm, he'll play the kickboxing game a little bit like I said, he's fighting in his back pocket, I feel like before the fight comes, that explosion is really what we're on though. waiting for him and that's what I mean, that's what Romero's game is about, it's like watching a spaceship take off, but even though you know it's coming, you see everything, the smoke, the flames and suddenly it's gone, It's like, well, I know it's coming, but not everyone can exactly get out of the way.

Robert Whittaker spent a lot of time with Romero in the octagon and I feel like when he approached him in a fight with Sagna, he had almost taken a marrow-type approach that, in my opinion, eyes, it's been there, it's there to be like a rehearsal. Pretty good overall for Adesanya coming into this fight with Romero, yes he was and he was. I'll be honest, I was quite surprised by the way I approached that he was too at the end. I mean, it was a little bit like he expected to not be able to catch Sonya, he expected to throw and miss the first few shots, so he started each of his punching combinations with a bit of a sprint like us.

You see from your Romero, the difference when I go down, you fought with Gastelum is that he wanted to stay in the pocket a little longer. I felt like he approached this fight with a little more ego, like he had a point to prove, so he stayed within range. a little bit more with Gastelum and he was using his head movement a little bit more, that's why he got cut in the early rounds and I think you'll look back on that fight and he carried it forward in the fight with Whittaker because I mean, look at that. bouncing off the fence, I wasn't that interested in this fight and keeping the ground in front of him, if Whiticus started to gain momentum I would just give him that space and he treated this fight much more like a marathon, and you know, I have to beat him. in this round.

I have to beat him this round if he lets the first round slip through his fingers and just reads his movement patterns and punishes him a little. Kicks to the body in here. he will do that and I think we saw a lot of evolution between the Gastelum fight and the Whitaker fight and the evolution will be very useful against Romero because if you think that Romero starts and throws ten punches and he misses the next combination, it could be eight punches and then it could be six, the more he misses the less he will throw, so when it comes to throwing one and two like he would like him to do in the fight with Costa, this is where Addison could stay in range and just pick, poke, poke and find those openings that will hurt him in the distance, like I said.

I don't think he's going to approach this as if he needs to get this finish in the first round. He knows the danger of your Romero, so he knows that it is a credential for him for his record when he fights him, a victory over your Romero, whether by knockout at any time, 25 minutes or until the end, the most important thing is which is impressive and he's what's largely intact, I mean, even in the knockout against Whitaker, here he measured it with that right hook, but I knew he needed the left hook to finish, but when we finished the left hook left, he shot and it was disappointing. he was let down, yeah, I mean, that shows you where his head is at because he wants to be so clinical and clean that there's no doubt it's interesting, it's five rounds, not three.

I think Romero is a scarier three-round prospect. hermanus, but a discerning man gets it done in five chances to look great and speaking of greatness, we'll see some more of these two fighters as Dan dives into more analysis on the other side of these, welcome back to your C's inside the octagon Jeongan. alongside Dan Hardy and we're talking about the middleweight title fight between Adesanya and Romero, damn, we've already covered some ground, maybe let's get back to that for us, okay, so what do we know about your Romero ? He is a dangerous and terrifying individual who has explosive power at any time. point in the fight, so unpredictability is the challenge for Adesanya, getting too involved in a fight early on leaves him susceptible to those flying knees and those wild flurries that he has, so what I hope we should do and what we saw in the fight with Whitaker is that if you ever take advantage of that rush that's coming, he'll just give you space when he feels the energy starting to wane from Romero's yard, then it'll be safer to stay a little closer to him, a little more inside the pocket, so that when Romero Si starts to advance, then he can start looking for his counterattacks, but fighting him without ego in those first rounds and not trying to eat up the octagon against Romero is the most logical thing to do.

What does he want. The thing to do is play the long game and pick your Romero to not put yourself in danger of that devastating knockout power as we look back at Romero's career for this show. I can't be the only one who thinks there have been some good changes in his game, particularly I think with his boxing and his defensive elements, but I want to know your opinion on this and some more definite points on how you think he has improved, well, just like us. As in the first half of the show, we identified that there was a shift in TAS Enya's focus from the fight with Gastelum to the fight with Whitaker.

In the fight with Gastelum, he was left in the pocket at the beginning of the fight, he paid for it because he got dropped through the chin edit exactly showed that he had a chin he did absolutely the same in the fight with Whitaker but it was still hit when he didn't want to be hit proved he had knockout power proves you have knockout power exactly I mean, you know we are It's alwayslearning new things about him, but what he wants to show against Romero is not that he has a chin, because I mean you'll need a chin against Romero if he attacks you anyway and not that. he has that kind of mentality where he needs to finish early, we need to see patience, we need to see precision from him, what we've seen from Romero is a difference in the way he approaches the pace of fire and I.

I feel like this was learned from the fight with Whitaker and also from the first one because in the first fight with Whitaker he came out, it was the oblique kicks that he was fighting with to defend takedowns and at the end of those first round or two, Romero seemed less of himself. and I think he felt more vulnerable when he was tired. I think in Romero's head, if he's fresh, no one can hurt him. I mean the defensive things he does in the fight when he's under pressure against someone who has boulders for shoulders, plus someone like oh yeah he can really do a lot of damage if you let him, I mean things that just bounce off in it, he's only too happy to let Acosta's power work.

Ramiro knows that he has this, this is a skin, he has hardened skin. marco, I mean, people say he's made of steel, but he also has good reactions, he's also great at taking off his shoulders, the difference between these two fighters is that Pollock might need one to teach him, he rarely used to say this. You might as well send me a postcard before you, before you throw that punch, he ends up being so big because that's his thing, he's a powerful puncher now, so show Ramiro that he could see these things coming, he can read those patterns and if This had lasted more than five rounds, I mean, you look at the low-cost pair at the end of the third.

I think Ramiro probably would have put more of a dent in him in five rounds or maybe even stopped him hmm. I feel like Ramiro is much better through five rounds. rounds, I mean, six knockouts in the third round, those first two rounds, especially since the Whitaker fight, the first Whitaker fight, it kind of allows those rounds to breathe a little bit, doesn't really seem to put the foot on the accelerator. absolutely. Those rounds, so I expect him to be pretty cautious in the early rounds, let Adesanya work and just try to shoot him with that big punch and I think once the battering rams get to the third quarter and fifth, that's when he starts. thinking, okay, he breaks out or starts walking with it down, I mean, that's the change in his style, the change in his style is that he's not bouncing, he's not moving as much as before and now in that frame he doesn't you can do it well. no, and I said no one could take that for 25 minutes, so I think the new style that we've seen where he's here and he's walking to the range shows confidence that he can take big hits from people, confidence that he has the reactions so you can read what's coming and stay out of harm's way and also if the sprint attacks don't work you need another way in, yeah I hope the sprint attacks fail on you again so the next line of attack is to try of standing on his front foot and forcing him back against the fence where he just has to deal with that great power, yeah, and if anyone can walk through a meteor shower, it's your Romero right and talking about someone who could be throwing quite a few.

Barb is his way, he's Israel Adesanya, he's an elite level striker and I'm excited about what you're going to show us then because the swoons and fake hitting when it's done brilliantly is incredible to watch, but it's also easily overlooked. high, so "I hope you can show us some of these finite details and one thing I noticed about Addison here before this was that she said she wanted to make them all cry, Romero, and this is the way she does it. I'll do it right with his amazing yes it is and it's a constant beatdown for the whole 25 minutes, it's the way Adesanya is going to approach this as it is, if he wants to make Romero cry he has to be conscious while he's crying, people won't cry when he is. unconscious, so he didn't take a big hit.

He won't wake up on the floor crying. He wants to slowly take your soul away throughout the fight and the beauty of the way Adesanya approaches things is that it's not if we're fighting and I'm going. to throw my right hand is in my left hand I'm going to fly this wide you're going to block that you're going to see it coming yeah if I go like this and you expect to see this coming now for a front kick to your face you're not blocking the coming blow you're blocking the end of the punch you're anticipating this is where Adesanya is so good because he throws things that you anticipate and then changes in the moment partly because he's not really 100% committed to the power, he's not trying to hurt you with every shot , is trying to unlock your guard and find your weaknesses in his UFC debut against Rob Wilkinson.

Sorry Robert this was just a shutout I mean yeah I had to hire you plus get knocked down a couple times and get back on your feet this was a clinic and look at the way he moves look at our slippery , he is our smoothie, this is where he is choosing. You can see Wilkinson's reactions because he thinks the shots are coming and then they're not and then something else comes and he blocks a shot and gets hit by another which constantly discourages my defense it doesn't work oh my god he's leaking I mean . He's God, he was like a sieve in this fight because he couldn't stop before us and you're walking in when a fighter slumps against the fence on his head, yeah, they may not have been physically hit, but his soul has been, yeah .

You stole his soul that night and Rob Wilkinson slumped against the fence, yeah that's what he's talking about, it's a comprehensive beating instead of going out with one punch, so Dan, let's change it to Romero then and earlier you said about his ability to get the finish, six of his seven knockouts came in the third round, so he finds ways to win and close the fight sometimes in those middle rounds as well, yeah, and I think he was saying because this is a five round combat. Fight those first rounds. I don't think they'll force him back to the point.

I think he would feel at too much risk, especially because he knows that on a signal you can fight hard for five rounds. I think those first ones. A couple of rounds is where Romero CH hangs back throwing that kind of stuff to try to catch him when he's overcommitting. I think when he gets to the third, fourth and fifth rounds that's when we see Romero starting to take control. initiative, we may see some flurries early, but I think ultimately the way we're going to try to get our hands on Romero under Adesanya is to walk within range and what we've seen in some of his fights is this, I want That is to say, it is almost as if it were not there.

Worried about anything coming home, I mean, he was walking with Brinson like nothing was going to come back to him and hurt him. I want to do that against someone like Machida, who is an excellent striker, a great counterattacker, very good at setting traps. Abood. and luring people into things they didn't want to be hit with, even when I was hitting Romero it wasn't really affecting him and this was just brutality at its best, I mean a lovely little double jab with a right hand far. Watch the replay and appreciate that it is a beautiful contrast, the double jab simply to raise the left hand.

There was no real need for the double jab in that fight to hit Rockhold. He was punching over his head to get close with his left hand. I mean, he was exposing the same weakness that Bisping showed on Rockhold, basically it's that because Rockhold was sinking for the check hook, she went over that, but the good thing about that in comparison is that it wasn't Romero running from one side of the octagon to the other to clear the fence where he was walking into range and Rockhold backing away because he knows the dangers come from switching it back to Adesanya at that point and I've heard people talk about how they like it do his job and something that really resonated with me was when I heard that someone who is particularly good at striking or just fighting in general makes things seem like they're happening in slow motion and Adesanya is so elitist that he does it that I feel like that's how he operates because it's just millimeters here and there and that's how you saw those opportunities.

I think he is one of those athletes. I agree and that is his kickboxing record that backs him up and it is in that circumstance that I am firmly of the opinion that that comfort under pressure in punch exchanges only comes from years and years and years of fighting and sparring the pads they don't the pads don't do it because it's a little bit different that's exactly that's a light it's a live match with someone who's thinking about themselves and they throw several different techniques at you I mean in 80 kickboxing matches there's probably some rematches there, but there are probably 70 different opponents, yes, 70 different looks, maybe it's more the same with his MMA career, there have been several different looks, so he has this understanding that there are so many different options out there. there and you have a good read on them and then you'll start to identify which of those reads you're going to need in this fight and then you'll start to apply it, but the relaxed nature in which you approach fights allows you to use faints and really sell them well.

I mean, Brad Tavares was a great fighter. He just couldn't read Adesanya's move and there's this little sequence here. Which I'll show you what this is, so he does a leg kick and then a body kick, so he timed the body kicking Tavares in the head, now the next one slides in with the knee, look at that because I mean that It's so subtle. it's so subtle what the back foot is and keep in mind think you're brad tavares you just took a nasty hit to the liver and your body is starting to shut down you don't want to take this shot again okay let's have a look at this real quick, like this look how he slides in here very relaxed and you can't sit down, look you can't sell these faints unless you're relaxed because there will be tension, your opponent will see that you're tensing up, but throw that little feint, slide into range and hit the pipe and then with the head kick and again it's like 50% power, 50% power, he'd rather land with half power than not land at all and he knows it too. his flashy style has snowball effects it's not like one punch it's a boost another body shot like mix things up and I stole it from Teddy Atlas is one of my favorite phrases when he puts water in the basement, put money in the bank Jocelyn gave everything she could in that fight, what was the turning point in that last round was that she just took too much and couldn't take it anymore, she would know that he had been hit in the body.

He has weakened even in the last round, Adesanya hit the body before going to the head to take him down, that constant variation of targets is not a finishing technique, that is the beauty and it is a dismantling of the entire enemy defense, of that talk later. with John Jones, he's attacking the supply lines, he's taking out the left flank, he's taking out the right flank, he's using that psychological propaganda to get into his opponents' heads and force them to do things they don't want to do, all of these things are a Adesanya's skills and I don't know if Ramirez faced anyone who could really do that to him before Rob Whitaker is a great striker, but still it's much more of a fundamentally sound technical distance and nice, well, it's not the same . kind of deception there is on Adesanya's part and that's the point, the difference here is making Romero do things he doesn't want to do and getting hit with things he doesn't expect Dan, thank you very much for your thoughts and analysis, keep the conversation going. using the hash tag inside the octagon at UFC Europe is the identifier.

Thank you very much for watching, enjoy this blockbuster of a title fight, it will be important, see you next time.