Breakdown | Israel Adesanya vs Dricus Du Plessis
DDP makes a million mistakes, but if his opponent doesn’t make him pay for them, does it matter?
In this fight, DDP made the footwork mistake of bringing his feet together far more times than Adesanya did, but he was never getting attacked when he was doing that. DDP is always doing something, which means over the course of the fight, he’s more likely to eventually fit the square peg through the circle hole.
Comments (5)
I really like it when you talk so much about striking, great work! Question: You pointed out Dricus being vulnerable during his blitzing shifts. What do you think would be a good counter, exactly? You mentioned Teeps. I think theyre cool but more like preventive than an actual reactive counter. Also you need the distance for it and Izzy often didn‘t have his base back after lowkicking and by the time he had, Dricus was already too close. Which punch exactly would be good as a counter? My idea was maybe step in with elbows and let dricus run on them. Cool post - looking forward for more!
You got it! Intercepting elbows are by far the best and most damaging, but just sticking out the jab is probably even easier and can keep you away from the clinch. Izzy already has a nice framing jab (the sticky jab) but he never used it to intercept the blitzes. He popped DDP once with a rear straight too or a check hook (pivoting off with the counter lead hook) can be very effective. Even knees can be great intercepting shots (Aldo and Machida used them to punish blitzes a lot).
Great analysis Miguel like always! When I was watching the fight live I was so frustrated with Adesanya not countering Du Plessis when he started bullrushing, it is what it is. Obviously not easy in such a grueling fight.
It must be so exhausting to fight someone like DDP who's always doing everything at 100% and in the most unorthodox way he can. Also, I liked the editing in this one. Not sure if you did anything different or I was just paying more attention to it.
Thanks! I'm not sure what I did differently either haha