Michael Bisping thinks Sean Strickland could pose some problems for Israel Adesanya if he mixes in his grappling.
Middleweight champion Adesanya (24-2 MMA, 13-2 UFC) defends his title against Strickland (27-5 MMA, 14-5 UFC) in the main event of UFC 293 on Sept. 9 at Qudos Bank Arena in Sydney. The main card airs on pay-per-view following prelims expected on ESPN and ESPN+.
Strickland, who’s coming off back-to-back wins over Nassourdine Imavov and Abus Magomedov, primarily has used his striking to become a top contender. But having trained with Strickland in the past, Bisping says his grappling is underrated and should be utilized as a path to victory against Adesanya.
“If Sean could take Israel Adesanya down, this could be a really interesting fight,” Bisping said on his YouTube channel. “Sean, I’ve trained with him myself – he’s got tremendous cardio. He can go all day, and he has a very economical style to go a long time, to go the distance, because he uses a lot of jabs. He looks for openings and only really exerts himself when he sees the openings. But he’s got tremendous grappling. I’ve trained with him. His ground game is very, very good – very dangerous. He has a very underrated ground game – brilliant sweeps and obviously very good submissions.”
Many have tried to wrestle Adesanya, but have failed to keep him down for the most part. Bisping isn’t sure if Strickland has the ability, but says he should keep Adesanya guessing.
“Do you think he’ll actually try and shoot a takedown? Because you never know: the element of surprise,” Bisping said. “I don’t think Izzy will expect Sean to shoot a double-leg takedown, but he might just do that. Set it up with the jab: Boom-boom, 1-2, drop a level, drive into the fence, get your hands together. When you get the hands together, you can pick someone up and put them down pretty easily. But that’s the hard part, and of course Izzy’s defended that stuff many, many times.”
For more on the card, visit MMA Junkie’s event hub for UFC 293.
