While all eyes are on UFC 274 tonight, the promotion announced the headliner for their signature July PPV. On tonight’s PPV broadcast, it was announced that middleweight champion Israel Adesanya (22-1) will defend his middleweight title against Jared Cannonier (15-5).
The fight will headline UFC 276 on July 2nd. For Cannonier, he finally gets the crack at the title that he’s been searching for since he moved down to middleweight. Cannonier moved down to 185 in 2018 after unsuccessful stints at heavyweight and light heavyweight.
Immediately, it was evident that 185 was his proper weight class. Since dropping down, The Killa Gorilla is 5-1 and only Kelvin Gastelum has gone the distance in those victories. The lone loss came against former UFC champion Robert Whittaker.
Coming into this title fight, Cannonier is riding a two-fight winning streak. The last time we saw him was at UFC 271 when he took on Derek Brunson. After a tough first round, Cannonier swarmed Brunson in the second and got the TKO victory.
UFC’s Last Stylebender Defends Again
Speaking of UFC 271, that is also the last time that we saw Israel Adesanya. That was the night that he had his highly anticipated rematch with former middleweight champion Robert Whittaker.
The fight was very close, but Adesanya was able to get the win and retain his middleweight championship. It was Adesanya’s fourth successful defense of his UFC middleweight championship.
In Stylebender’s MMA career, he’s only fallen short once. That was when he tried to become a two-division UFC champion and lost to Jan Blachowicz at light heavyweight. At middleweight, nobody has been better than Israel Adesanya.
Now, Adesanya will seek his fifth ruby for defending the middleweight crown successfully for a fifth time. He’s got a challenger in front of him with a ton of power, but if anyone can solve the riddle it’s Israel Adesanya. This should be a tremendous fight and it’s an excellent headliner for UFC 276.