UFC President Dana White announced the headliner for next month’s card that goes down in Sydney, Australia. White announced that middleweight champion Israel Adesanya (24-2) will defend his middleweight title against Sean Strickland (27-5).
UFC 293 goes down on September 9th. After Adesanya defeated Alex Pereira back in April, his focus was headlining the promotion’s card in Australia. Originally, the promotion was targeting Adesanya to face the winner of Dricus Du Plessis – Robert Whittaker which went down in July.
Du Plessis won the fight and setup the fight that everyone wanted to see. However, DDP was nursing a few injuries and wasn’t ready for the quick turnaround. However, Sean Strickland was more than willing to step in there after he defeated Abus Magomedov.
UFC 293
Strickland’s win over Magomedov was his second straight win dating back to January when he defeated Nassourdine Imavov. Overall, Strickland is 7-2 in his last nine fights. The two losses were a close split decision loss to Jared Cannonier and then a knockout loss to Alex Pereira.
Strickland and Adesanya have famously gone back-and-forth before and it’s a fight that seemed to have some steam behind it. Now, we will get to see these two square off. You likely won’t see a lot of wrestling in this matchup and if you see any, it’ll likely come from Sean Strickland.
Strickland’s TKO win over Abus Magomedov was arguably the best performance of his career and now he’s getting a shot at UFC gold.