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Next weekend at UFC 276, Jared Cannonier will attempt to pull off one of the biggest upsets in the promotion’s history when he fights Israel Adesanya for the middleweight title.
Jared Cannonier will come into his bout with Israel Adesanya at UFC 276 as a huge underdog, but can ‘The Killa Gorilla’ pull off a miracle?
Naturally, it won’t be easy for him given the incredible talents of ‘The Last Stylebender’, but Adesanya has been beaten before. As always, any fighter can win in the octagon at any given time.
With that in mind, here are five things Jared Cannonier needs to do to upset Israel Adesanya at UFC 276.
#5. Jared Cannonier cannot afford to get too crazy, or Israel Adesanya will knock him out
One of the most important things that Jared Cannonier needs to do if he wants to upset Israel Adesanya at UFC 276 is to not get too crazy, even if he manages to hurt ‘The Last Stylebender’.
Put simply, Adesanya is kryptonite for any fighter who attempts to simply charge in and knock him out. A master of counter-striking, the current middleweight champion is simply too sharp, too accurate and too powerful to charge in on.
The most notable example of this came in the fight that saw him win the middleweight crown, as Robert Whittaker continually charged at ‘The Last Stylebender’ in an attempt to take him out, only to run right into a brutal counter that eventually ended the fight.
However, other fighters such as Derek Brunson and Paulo Costa also left themselves far too open in their attempts to attack Adesanya. They were also finished in violent fashion as a result.
Cannonier is naturally an aggressive fighter who loves to come forward and throw bombs. For the most part in his octagon career, that approach has worked for him. However, he’s never faced a striker the caliber of Adesanya before, particularly when it comes to counter-striking.
With that in mind, Cannonier simply cannot afford to get too aggressive in this fight. He’d be much smarter to hang back, even if he hurts the champ, and look to unleash his offense in different ways instead.
#4. Jared Cannonier should use the clinch to close the distance on Israel Adesanya
Israel Adesanya is arguably the best striker not just in the middleweight division, but the entire UFC. To stand and trade with ‘The Last Stylebender’ would likely mean doom for any fighter that he faces, including Jared Cannonier.
However, if ‘The Killa Gorilla’ can close the distance on the champion, then could he perhaps find some success? It’s definitely possible.
Adesanya isn’t all that proven inside the clinch. He tends to do all of his good work from the outside, looking to keep a healthy distance between himself and his opponents.
‘The Last Stylebender’ has improved over time from close quarters, as he often hunts for wrist control in order to defend against his opponents’ takedowns and offense from there, but it still isn’t a natural position for him.
With that considered, a powerful fighter like Cannonier could definitely have some success if he can get hold of Adesanya and force him into the fence to attempt to do some damage.
Obviously, whether he can close the distance without eating something nasty is a major question mark, but if he can pull it off, then he could find a path to success.
#3. Jared Cannonier should look to land leg kicks on Israel Adesanya
While it certainly wouldn’t be considered a foolproof plan, one method of attack that could bring Jared Cannonier some success in his bout with Israel Adesanya could be his leg kicks.
‘The Killa Gorilla’ is widely renowned for his huge punching power, but he has had success in the UFC by using low kicks before, most notably when he injured Anderson Silva with them in their 2019 bout.
So could he use them to great effect against ‘The Last Stylebender’? It’s definitely possible. After all, Adesanya is a tall, lanky 185lber who stands at 6’4”, but his legs aren’t exactly thickly muscled, even if he has dangerous kicks in his own right.
More to the point, other fighters have had a certain degree of success by using leg kicks against him. Robert Whittaker, for instance, landed 13 of the 20 leg kicks he threw in his fight with Adesanya at UFC 271, while Yoel Romero and Silva also landed the majority of the leg kicks they threw against ‘The Last Stylebender’ too.
Obviously, it will be somewhat dangerous for Cannonier to go down this route, as throwing leg kicks, particularly if they don’t come with some kind of feint or fake, may open him up for Adesanya’s deadly counterstrikes.
However, he’d probably be better advised to look for leg kicks than he would be to simply charge at the champion throwing haymakers.
#2. Jared Cannonier should look to take Israel Adesanya down
Thus far into his UFC career, only one fighter has been able to defeat Israel Adesanya. That fighter was former light heavyweight champion Jan Blachowicz, a man who was clearly substantially larger than ‘The Last Stylebender’.
On the face of it, this probably won’t give Jared Cannonier a lot of hope for his title bout, but the truth is that the gameplan used by Blachowicz didn’t rely all that much on his size and strength.
In fact, while Blachowicz did land more significant strikes than Adesanya, the main reason he was able to defeat him was the fact that he was able to take ‘The Last Stylebender’ down – and keep him there – more often than any other fighter had done.
So can ‘The Killa Gorilla’ replicate that gameplan? Sure, Cannonier is not the most highly credentialed wrestler in the middleweight division, but he does have takedowns in his arsenal, and from the top, he’s very difficult to shake off.
Given that Adesanya’s ground defense has never looked all that hot, then, perhaps the challenger’s best approach ought to be to look to secure a takedown as early as possible, maybe from the clinch, and go from there.
#1. Jared Cannonier needs to hope for a bit of good luck
It almost sounds disrespectful to say, but the one thing that Jared Cannonier could do with in his clash with UFC middleweight champion Israel Adesanya is a bit of good luck. At the end of the day, he’s a big underdog in this bout for a reason, as from what we’ve seen from both men, ‘The Last Stylebender’ is probably the better fighter overall.
However, some of the craziest upsets in UFC history have been made possible with a little bit of luck coming the way of the underdog.
Take Matt Serra’s 2007 welterweight title victory over Georges St-Pierre, for instance. Sure, GSP admitted that he took Serra lightly, but on another day, the winging right hand landed by ‘The Terror’ doesn’t hit the Canadian in the right spot to wreck his equilibrium. Had that not happened, who knows what could’ve been.
Therefore, obviously Cannonier will be hoping to outclass Adesanya at UFC 276 – but he should also hope for something freakish to happen, like ‘The Last Stylebender’ slipping and eating a big shot, or hurting himself while defending a kick.
At the end of the day, a win in the octagon is a win regardless of how it’s achieved – and if ‘The Killa Gorilla’ can pull off the victory, even if it’s in lucky fashion, he’ll still become the first middleweight to ever beat ‘The Last Stylebender’.
