Jan Blachowicz believes Israel Adesanya did his homework to improve his grappling.
At UFC 259, Adesanya moved up to light heavyweight against Blachowicz to try and become a champ-champ. Many expected “The Last Stylebender” to win the fight yet it was the Pole who used his grappling to control the scrap and win it.
After the loss, many said Adesanya had a hole in his grappling. At UFC 263, he was defending his middleweight title against Marvin Vettori and many thought the Italian could find similar success. However, Adesanya showed off improved takedown defense and stuffed the majority of takedown to clearly win the fight. For Blachowicz, he says Adesanya did his homework and says he will be more dangerous on the ground.
“Good fight to watch. Good job,” Blachowicz said to James Lynch. “I think that Vettori did a little better when he took him down, but I think Adesanya did his homework, and now he will be much more dangerous on the ground. He swept him a couple of times — when Vettori caught his back he escaped really easy. So nice job.”
Although many thought Blachowicz provided the blueprint on how to defeat Adesanya, he doesn’t think so. He knows The Last Stylebender is so elite that he makes major changes every fight so one way he loses likely won’t work his next fight.
“Did I show the world how to do this? Israel is one of the best in the world. He’s a world champion,” Blachowicz said. “Like I said before, he did his homework really well and we saw the result in the fight, so congrats.”
Jan Blachowicz is set to defend his light heavyweight title for the second time at UFC 266 on September 25 at a location TBD. He will face Glover Teixeira in a fight that had to happen after the run the Brazilian has been on.
