- Joined
- Mar 4, 2023
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First off, I am not an Izzy fan and I believe Pereira is the infinitely more likeable human being. I am rooting for Alex 100%.
I know some people have a very hard time overlooking that the record on paper is 0-3. The idea that Alex has Izzy's number and is the clearly superior striker is an obvious conclusion. But let's look at the bare facts of their previous matchups.
First fight: The consensus is that it was a close competitive decision that could have gone to Izzy without controversy.
Second fight: Pereira got a standing 8-count before the knockout victory. The referee stepped in as he was taking damage to determine if he could safely continue which gave him time to recover and compose himself. He didn't look terribly hurt to me but the momentum was clearly in Izzy's favour before the intervention.
Third fight: Adesanya badly hurt Alex at the end of the first round. Pereira does not dispute that he was badly hurt. Credit it to him for his honesty and for recovering well enough to win the following round. Israel was up on the scorecards before the fifth round finish.
Reasonable observers can safely conclude that Izzy is entirely capable of badly hurting Alex on the feet and that he is capable of doing it before Alex gets to him. None of the fights transpired the same way so confident predictions about how Alex has Izzy's number are simplistic. There is also the fact that they have only fought MMA once. We can already see with the standing 8 count that there is a disconnect between kickboxing and MMA.
As an aside, this fight reminds me of Wanderlei vs Rampage. Obviously Wanderlei was washed in their trilogy fight but after he beat Rampage twice people spoke as though he had his number. Meanwhile Rampage fought Liddell the night of their first fight while Wanderlei fought Yoshida. And the ref stood them up when Rampage was beating him up on the ground in their second fight. But fans were acting like he had Rampage's number. He was 2-0, you see. Again, the trilogy didn't prove much but my point is that there is more to just the numbers.
I know some people have a very hard time overlooking that the record on paper is 0-3. The idea that Alex has Izzy's number and is the clearly superior striker is an obvious conclusion. But let's look at the bare facts of their previous matchups.
First fight: The consensus is that it was a close competitive decision that could have gone to Izzy without controversy.
Second fight: Pereira got a standing 8-count before the knockout victory. The referee stepped in as he was taking damage to determine if he could safely continue which gave him time to recover and compose himself. He didn't look terribly hurt to me but the momentum was clearly in Izzy's favour before the intervention.
Third fight: Adesanya badly hurt Alex at the end of the first round. Pereira does not dispute that he was badly hurt. Credit it to him for his honesty and for recovering well enough to win the following round. Israel was up on the scorecards before the fifth round finish.
Reasonable observers can safely conclude that Izzy is entirely capable of badly hurting Alex on the feet and that he is capable of doing it before Alex gets to him. None of the fights transpired the same way so confident predictions about how Alex has Izzy's number are simplistic. There is also the fact that they have only fought MMA once. We can already see with the standing 8 count that there is a disconnect between kickboxing and MMA.
As an aside, this fight reminds me of Wanderlei vs Rampage. Obviously Wanderlei was washed in their trilogy fight but after he beat Rampage twice people spoke as though he had his number. Meanwhile Rampage fought Liddell the night of their first fight while Wanderlei fought Yoshida. And the ref stood them up when Rampage was beating him up on the ground in their second fight. But fans were acting like he had Rampage's number. He was 2-0, you see. Again, the trilogy didn't prove much but my point is that there is more to just the numbers.