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The most anticipated fight in the history of Oceanic mixed martial arts will take place in front of 60,000 people in the sporting capital of Australia. Robert Whittaker will attempt to validate his status as the best middleweight in the world, while Israel Adesanya will look to usurp his throne and break through as the Ultimate Fighting Championship’s next legitimate superstar. In the same arena where Holly Holm soul-snatched Ronda Rousey and forever reshaped women’s MMA, the region’s two giants -- leaders of their respective tribes in Auckland and Sydney -- will do battle for the heart and soul of Oceania.
The bout is many years in the making. Even as they built their records in different sports and on opposite corners of the globe, MMA insiders have thirsted over the inevitable encounter between “The Reaper” and “The Last Stylebender.” They first came face-to-face 10 months ago in an Adelaide hotel lobby, where the two men exchanged awkward pleasantries and Adesanya complimented Bobby on his pleasant fragrance. Since then, what started as a fantasy matchup for the sports hardcores has steadily gestated into Australia’s most talked about fight in a generation, and perhaps the biggest UFC title fight of 2019.
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Both men are prodigious talents, but the respective paths that have led Whittaker and Adesanya to UFC 243 are distinguishable in almost every conceivable way.
Whittaker was raised in a single-parent home in the housing commission flats in Sydney’s Sutherland Shire; Adesanya’s parents were wealthy businesspeople in Lagos, Nigeria, and his upbringing was mediated by paid servants and material opulence. Whittaker was enrolled in karate at aged seven by his father “Big Jack” and took to heart lessons about discipline, respect and integrity; Adesanya didn’t find kickboxing until 18 after his family had moved to Rotorua, New Zealand, and he’d stumbled across the muay Thai film “Ong-Bak.” For Whittaker, fighting was a ladder out of poverty and his modest life as a bricklayer; Adesanya, a talented dancer whose parents expected him to get a degree and enter professional services, chose fighting as a hobby and an antidote to bullying. One was quiet and brooding, who never imagined he’d sell out arenas; the other charismatic and loquacious, whose initial impression of cage fighting was that it didn’t pay enough.
Both turned professional in 2008 -- Adesanya in kickboxing and Whittaker in MMA. Within four years, the latter had compiled a 9-2 record, and was cast in Australian/UK spin-off of “The Ultimate Fighter,” The Smashes. The first glimpses of the 21-year old reveal a hyper-competitive and somewhat stroppy young man, thirsty for validation and outwardly hostile to his UK counterparts. Whittaker was socially reserved but gladiatorial in combat, a fighter’s fighter who did his talking in the cage. Adesanya, meanwhile, spent most of his 20s on a kickboxing odyssey, competing across China, Malaysia, Turkey and the United States while occasionally moonlighting in MMA and boxing. He became a star in New Zealand, and made a name for himself as the “Black Dragon” as he competed across China. Of the scores of profiles and news pieces that were written about him as he added conquest after conquest to his resume, the consensus was that Adesanya was a cross-cultural star in the making.
Whittaker’s exhibition fights on “The Smashes” lasted a combined one minute and 36 seconds, and he breezed through the finale to pick up a “six-figure” contract in the UFC, but the beginnings of his Octagon career were inauspicious. He lost two fights in a row after his debut, including a highlight reel TKO to future title-contender Stephen Thompson, and many wrote him off as another Australian prospect who looked great against journeyman but didn’t have what it took to hang with the elite. He quietly moved up to middleweight after breaking even at 170 pounds, and that’s when he started to turn heads en route to one of the most under-appreciated title campaigns of the modern era.
It took Whittaker two and a half more years and six consecutive victories to find himself in an interim championship fight opposite Cuban juggernaut Yoel Romero, the man that “undisputed” champion Michael Bisping had diligently managed to avoid during his 18-month title reign. In an instant classic that saw Whittaker sustain a serious knee injury in the opening round, he rallied to take the fight by the scorecards, becoming the first ever Australian UFC champion.
Around this time, Adesanya hung up his kickboxing gloves and made MMA his full-time vocation, leaving on the back of two failed attempts to capture Glory’s middleweight kickboxing title with an overall kickboxing record of 75-5-1. Seven months later he made his UFC debut in Perth, Western Australia, the first of six bouts he would compete in over the following 14 months, with a tidal wave of hype swelling from internet forums and highlight videos. Even before he’d stepped foot in the Octagon, he predicted he would wrest Whittaker’s middleweight title -- specifically in an arena in this part of the world.
Izzy headlined his first UFC show in Las Vegas on international fight week five months after his debut, wiping out 8th-ranked Brad Tavares in a fight that served as his coming out party as a legitimate contender. A scintillating knockout of Derek Brunson in Madison Square Garden followed closely by a baton-passing performance against Anderson Silva at UFC 234 in Melbourne landed him an interim title fight, where he showcased his resilience against perennial contender Kelvin Gastelum en route to a decision victory. The fight remains a contender for “Fight of the Year” honors, a punctuation mark on a UFC run that can only be described as meteoric.
Adesanya’s style outside the cage, just like his road from contender to champion, is the antithesis of Whittaker’s. He’s a walking sound bite, whom the UFC and the media got behind early -- with comparisons to Jon Jones and Conor McGregor abounding from the Tavares fight onwards. Wherever the man goes, from interviews, to open-workouts, to the cage, he is the embodiment of “living the moment,” the star attraction with pop-culture references, dance-moves and snappy call outs to boot.
When he marches into battle against Whittaker, he will look to validate the hype and assume the throne of the next bona fide WME-star, whilst Bobby will look to channel the blue-collar heavyweight champion Stipe Miocic, who dismantled his division’s Adesanya -- knockout artist Francis Ngannou -- last January. It’s the tall poppy versus John Wick; a clash of personalities almost as intriguing as the clash of styles.
It’s everything that makes this sport compelling.
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Australia is often described as a great market for the UFC, but the cut-through of individual fights and fighters has historically been limited. Whereas the likes of Mark Hunt, Dan Kelly and Jake Matthews have found themselves on the periphery of the mainstream’s radar from time to time, each has failed to translate passing interest into something more sustained. Most coverage remains stubbornly fixated on lazy and ill-informed narratives, and commentary is predominantly authored by sports reporters taking a detour from Aussie rules football, rugby and cricket to cover the occasional UFC event. Real journalism -- even basic research -- is too often lacking in this part of the world when it comes to the cage, and fandom has flourished not due to, but in spite of, quality coverage.
But UFC 243 promises to change all that, because Whittaker and Adesanya aren’t just participants in a global sport who happen to fight out of Australia and New Zealand. They are at its apex, the consensus two best middleweights on the planet with a combined middleweight record in the UFC of 14 wins and zero defeats. Beyond their achievements in the cage, a fight between an Australian and a Kiwi makes sense to the mainstream sports consciousness, owing to athletic rivalries between the two nations stretching back more than a century.
In Rugby Union, New Zealand’s national sport, the rivalry between the All Blacks and the Australian Wallabies originated in 1903, with the “greatest game of rugby ever played” involving the two principals 97 years later. Whilst Australia is often portrayed as New Zealand’s older sibling -- it dwarfs Southern counterpart in population, landmass and economy -- in union, the younger brother is king: in the 166 test matches played between the two sides, the All Blacks have been victorious in 115 of them, a dominance that succeeds generations of Wallabies that have tried and failed to reverse in front of crowds that have twice exceeded 100,000.
In netball, the enmity is just as passionately felt by Australian Diamonds and New Zealand’s Silver Ferns. The teams have been ranked No. 1 and No. 2 in the world for the best part of 80 years, and though the Aussies have won the lion’s share of their encounters, the games are always nail-biting affairs. As described by veteran sports reporter Adam McNicol in his 2013 book Us vs Them: Great Australian Sporting Rivalries:
The rivalry between the diamonds and the silver fans consistently deliver skill and drama of the highest order. Not only is it the greatest rivalry in netball, but it might also just be the greatest rivalry in all Australian sport
These rivalries between Australia and New Zealand, steeped in history, form a crucial backdrop to the clash and the tsunami of hype that will come crashing down on Oct. 6. The fight promises not only showcase this region’s talents, but to educate the casual sports fan and concretize MMA as a legitimate part of the nation’s sporting culture.
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There are many intersecting narratives which form the backdrop of Bobby vs Izzy, but at least within the confines of the sport, the resurrection of the UFC’s 185-pound weight class is arguably the most important backdrop to UFC 243’s headliner.
For years, the division belonged to Silva, the moon-walking, front-kick-KO’ing matador who captured the title in 2006 and defended it an astonishing 10 times over the succeeding seven years. “The Spider” was the most dominant champion of his era, finishing nine of his 11 opponents in title fights and moonlighting as a 205’er just because he could. Through a combination of matrix-esque striking, psychological warfare and spectacular come-from-behind victories, Silva became one of the sport’s greatest stars and made 185-pounds a marquee division by extension. He won an astonishing 16 consecutive UFC fights, building an aura of invincibility that came crashing down when he met a certain Long Islander’s right hand one night in Vegas.
Since then, middleweight might charitably be described as being “in a state of flux.” Silva lost his rematch against Chris Weidman at UFC 168, when the latter’s knee turned the former’s shin into hot soup and “Anderson Silva leg break reactions” became an internet trend. Weidman reigned over the division for a short time after “The Spider,” though the nature of his victories -- a KO whilst Silva was clowning, then a gruesome-injury-induced TKO -- meant that the stardom torch was never really passed. His subsequent title defences against an ageing Lyoto Machida and a post-USADA Vitor Belfort were moderately impressive, but right when the fanbase seemed ready to “join the team” Luke Rockhold put a beating on the “All American” to steal his title and his undefeated record.
Which is where things really turned sideways, because Rockhold, looking very much the part of the UFC’s next big thing, turned around and lost via first round KO to Bisping -- a man he had comprehensively dismantled just 18 months prior. “The Count,” perhaps the most improbable UFC champion since police-officer-turned-fighter Forrest Griffin beat Rampage Jackson on points at UFC 86, would hold the middleweight title for exactly 18 months after that, becoming the face of divisional incoherence and the much-loathed “money fight” era.
Bisping first defended the strap against 13th-ranked middleweight contender Dan Henderson, who’d lost six of his last nine fights and been stopped in four of them, narrowly beating the 46-year old “Hendo” via decision. He then took an extended hiatus, over which he simultaneously claimed to be injured (when asked about fighting a top contender) and ready to compete on a moment’s notice (if he was to fight semi-retired former welterweight champion Georges St Pierre).
Whittaker, the unheralded former welterweight who’d quietly resuscitated his career at 185-pounds, stepped up where Bisping had demurred. He finished Ronaldo Souza via head kick and punches in a fight where many were giving him a snowball’s chance in hell to win, then backed it up three months later in an instant classic with Romero for the interim 185-pound title. Despite a cringeworthy in-cage face off foreshadowing the eventual title unification bout, Bisping would go on to fight St Pierre, who submitted him inside three rounds before surrendering the lineal title barely a month later. In the wake of the massive UFC 217 event -- the biggest pay-per-view of the year -- Whittaker was elevated to the status of undisputed middleweight champion via press release.
Since then, “The Reaper” has fought just once in a rematch with Romero that didn’t even count as a title defense on account of the Cuban missing weight by a wretched 90 grams. He’s battled a succession of 11th hour injuries and a crippling episode of depression, whilst the middleweight division has swelled with promising contenders he’s been unable to defend his title against. In the past two years, two ancillary pieces of the middleweight championship have been created by the promotion to band-aid over his absence, and the weight class has been in a perpetual state of park.
When Whittaker and Adesanya meet in the center of the Octagon, at midday Australian time in the largest sporting arena in the country, each hope to author a victory which categorically anoints them as the face of the division, erasing the choppiness, false starts and placeholders of the preceding two years. Many anticipate it may be the beginning of a great rivalry -- perhaps even a trilogy. But before that, it is vital that each man enter the cage, and one walks out the undisputed champion.
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It would be dishonest to gloss over the UFC’s stake in all of this.
Adesanya, earmarked early as a future star, is everything the organization knows how to promote. A magnetic force, oozing authenticity and conspicuous self-belief; a man who shines in the spotlight and has already sowed the seeds of an eventual super-fight opposite pound-for-pound king Jon Jones. Adesanya talks and the things he says manifest in real life, a man whose clarity of vision is nothing short of spellbinding, who just happens to have roots in two different continents.
Whittaker, at least outside the cage, is in many ways Izzy’s opposite. He is conspicuously uncomfortable at press conferences and interviews and unwilling to accommodate fans’ thirst for trash talking. He has publicly criticized the UFC’s pay structure and when he purported to compete in the Commonwealth games, the promotion threatened to strip his title. He has competed just twice in over two years, unwittingly earning the reputation as an unreliable champion.
These issues matter, if not when the cage door closes then when they open again. If Adesanya loses, one suspects he will be fast-tracked into a rematch, whereas Whittaker may well find himself at the back of the line. All eyes are on the champ.
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Both men are exciting strikers, and have a captivating presence when the lights are at their brightest. Whittaker, a mild-mannered introvert outside the cage, beats his chest like a Dothraki inside it, paying homage to his father and summoning every bad experience that’s confronted him on the way to the top. Adesanya, the self-proclaimed “Player One,” lives up to his moniker, implementing flamboyant offense against some of the world’s best and making them look like -- to use his words -- bots. The style match-up is nothing short of fascinating, and with each Whittaker and Adesanya earning fight of the night or performance of the night honors in their last four bouts, it promises fireworks.
Adesanya’s accuracy and innovation, or Whittaker’s all-round game and vaunted wrestling? Izzy’s one hitter quitter, or Bobby’s blitzkrieg? Oddsmakers are split right down the middle -- with neither man walking in as the favorite or the underdog. Whilst it’s easy to envision either man in victory, the thought of the other losing at the peak of their powers is hard to fathom.
Conventional wisdom dictates that the Whittaker who last fought Romero would beat the Adesanya who bested Gastelum, but both men are known for remaking themselves in between fights. Adesanya, in particular, has taken quantum leaps since his UFC debut last February, and Whittaker has been on the shelf for 14 months.
The fight itself, stripped of its cultural and political trimmings, is easily the best styles-matchup of the year on paper.
And it happens this weekend at UFC 243.
Jacob Debets is a law graduate and writer from Melbourne, Australia. He is currently writing a book analyzing the economics and politics of the MMA industry. You can view more of his writing at jacobdebets.com.