Israel Adesanya gained an impressive victory at UFC 287 this past weekend, beating Alex Pereira at the fourth time of asking after three defeats to the same opponent, reclaiming the middleweight title in the process.
Slow-motion footage of the moment The Last Stylebender landed the deciding blow has emerged, and shows just how quickly Adesanya turned things around, and in style to boot.
The footage starts with Pereira working over Adesanya against one of the sides of the Octagon, with a left hand to the side of the head followed by a right-hand body shot and a glancing knee strike.
This is then followed by another left-hand strike, and at this point Adesanya seems to be in trouble. Pereira had also been working over the vulnerable lead leg of the Nigerian.
But Adesanya is able to turn the fight around with a left-right combo, with the right hand in particular having a significant impact on the Brazilian.
Pereira is barely upright, still dazed, when he is caught by another monster right-hand blow which puts him down and out. Adesanya then is poised to do more damage, when the referee steps in and ends the contest in the second round.
In real-time, the strikes landed by Adesanya might have been hard to spot, outside of the right hand that knocked down Pereira. In slow-motion, it just looks more impressive every time you see it.
One person in particular who was impressed with Adesanya’s work; his teammate and UFC featherweight champion Alexander Volkanovski.
Watching on, Volk was seemingly pumped and extremely happy for his friend and training partner.
Also impressed was Joe Rogan, commentating on the fight for BT Sport.
Rogan called the knockout: “One of the greatest KOs I’ve seen in my life.”
What did Israel Adesanya say after UFC 287?
Adesanya played down talk of a future UFC trilogy fight with Pereira, stating his belief that he is ready to move up to the light heavyweight division.
“I gave him a fast track to the belt… But also, I was looking for that challenge. Now he’s gotta do the hard yards if he wants to do that, but I don’t think he’s gonna because he’ll go cause problems at 205(lbs) and f***, good luck to everybody else because he’s a motherf***** to deal with.”
The footage shows just fast and accurate Adesanya is, with four clean punches, with a couple of extra strikes on the ground for good measure. Surely one of the greatest performances of his career.
