Nigerian UFC champion Israel Adesanya defeated Jarred Cannonier via unanimous decision (49-46, 49-46, 50-45) to retain the UFC middleweight championship on Sunday at the T-mobile Arena, Las Vegas.
‘The Last Stylebender’ made his debut in 2018 inside the Octagon and is still undefeated in the middleweight.
He first captured the interim title in the Fight of The Year winner against Kelvin Gastelum in 2019.
‘Izzy’ then defeated Robert Whittaker and unified the titles that same year.
The Nigerian who was raised in New Zealand has successfully defended his title four times since then. On an otherwise perfect record for Adesanya (22-1), his only loss was during his unsuccessful step up to light heavyweight, losing to then-champion Jan Blachowicz.
The Nigerian-born New Zealander has thus successfully defended his middleweight title for the fifth time.
While Adesanya defeated Robert Whittaker in February for the second time to retain his middleweight strap, Cannonier knocked out Derek Brunson in the second round in February to become the weight’s No.1 contender.
Fellow countryman Kamaru Usman (aka, Nigerian nightmare) and Cameron’s Francis Ndougou were in attendance to support Adesanya.
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