We’ve now moved into the portion of the list that takes place during my time with the company. I had a little more than a year under my belt when I hopped on a plane to Australia for the first time to work the middleweight title unification bout between Israel Adesanya and Robert Whittaker in Melbourne.
A couple hours before the first fight, my boss and fellow UFC.com writer Steve Latrell heard Adesanya had a special walkout planned – something about a dance routine. Before the biggest fight of his life? It sounded like a questionable idea when most figured he’d need every ounce of energy and focus channeled toward “The Reaper,” and when Adesanya, flanked by childhood friends, took to entertaining the record-setting crowd by performing a number featuring a voiceover lifted from the movie Taken, I thought to myself: “This is cool, but man, he better pull through here.”
More Desert Island Fights: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3
Of course, he did in typical fashion for “The Last Stylebender.” He controlled the range, pounced on Whittaker’s mistakes, and broke the champion down in less than two rounds to start his championship reign in earnest, and it’s a performance I enjoy rewatching from walkout to knockout.
