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#2 Israel Adesanya vs. Kelvin Gastelum – interim UFC middleweight title, UFC 236
With UFC middleweight champion Robert Whittaker on the shelf with an injury, it made sense for the promotion to crown an interim champion at UFC 236, matching top contenders Israel Adesanya and Kelvin Gastelum against one another.
But nobody could’ve expected that we’d be treated to an incredible, stone-cold classic of a fight that would stand up against the best title fights in UFC history.
Adesanya came in as the favorite. The Last Stylebender had overcome former champion Anderson Silva in his previous fight, and had never really been tested in the octagon, while Gastelum actually hadn’t fought in almost a year after his win over Jacare Souza.
But in the opening round, it was Gastelum who stunned everyone by pushing the action, using some smart feints to set up his striking. Not only did he land the better shots – he even dropped Adesanya at one point.
Adesanya came back and won the second and third rounds, finding his range to land his usual sniping strikes, but the fourth round saw Gastelum come roaring back by drawing him into a brawl. And that appeared to be to the TUF winner’s advantage – as he hurt Adesanya with a head kick and almost finished him off.
That left everything to play for in the fifth round. In one of the most action-packed rounds in UFC history, the two men went to war before Adesanya somehow dug deep and simply took things to another level. He hit Gastelum with combination after combination, and while he couldn’t put him away, it was clear who the winner was.
Adesanya was ruled the victor, becoming the interim UFC middleweight champion, but it wasn’t like either man came off badly after such a tremendous fight. And six months later, Adesanya would unify the titles by beating Whittaker – cementing himself as the best middleweight on the planet.
#1 Conor McGregor vs. Chad Mendes – interim UFC featherweight title, UFC 189
It might not have been as good a fight as Adesanya vs. Gastelum, but for sheer drama and spectacle, the fight between Conor McGregor and Chad Mendes at UFC 189 stands as the UFC’s most memorable interim title bout.
The fight was set up when Jose Aldo pulled out of his scheduled title fight at UFC 189 with McGregor citing an injury. The UFC understandably didn’t want to pull McGregor from the event, so they brought in former title challenger Chad Mendes and matched him with the Irishman for an interim title bout.
Sure, it only meant that the winner was guaranteed to fight Aldo somewhere down the line, but it still felt like a huge UFC title bout. The promotion treated it as such, updating their graphics for the show and even having Aaron Lewis and Sinead O’Connor sing the fighters’ entrance themes live.
All of that would’ve been for naught had the fight sucked, of course. But it was awesome in execution too.
McGregor looked confident coming in, and opened up on Mendes with a series of long punches and front kicks to the body, looking to wear him down. But Mendes quickly came back with a big takedown – finally looking to test what many fans felt would be the Notorious' Achilles heel.
McGregor did manage to escape to his feet, but not before Mendes sliced him wide open with a series of thudding elbows. However, incredibly, the Irishman didn’t look all that hurt – and went right back to working Mendes over with body shots and combinations.
When the round ended, Mendes had probably done more damage – but the body work was clearly taking its toll and he looked tired.
McGregor, on the other hand, was bloodied but seemed otherwise fine. Once he escaped another takedown in the second round, he opened up with more huge punches and finally, Mendes was badly hurt.
Like a matador stalking a bull, McGregor kept up the pressure – and eventually dropped the wrestler with a crushing left hand.
The fight was over, and not only had McGregor won his first taste of UFC gold, but he’d done it in the most dramatic way possible too. It didn’t matter that the fight was only for an interim title – at the time, it felt like the UFC didn’t get any bigger or better. In a lot of ways, the feeling was probably right.
