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Nigeria’s Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) middleweight champion, Israel ‘Last Style Bender’ Adesanya is scheduled to tango his old rival, Robert Whitaker in The Octagon on February 12.
Megasportsarena.com reports that this is contained in a full billing of all upcoming UFC fights for the first quarter of 2022, with Adesanya listed for the main event on the second fight night next month.
Houston, USA will be the venue, when New Zealand-based Adesanya faces off against the Australian ace in a rematch of their violent fight of 2018.
It will take place at UFC 271 inside Toyota Center, but a report by MMA Fighting disclosed that agreements have not been signed by either fighter.
Positive news though added that none is feuding with UFC about pay, thereby raising chances that nothing will get in the way of this New Zealand versus Australia showdown next month.
The stage is, therefore, set for another date in history for Adesanya, who made the best of his third middleweight title defense with a decision win over Marvin Vettori at UFC 263 in June.
Before that, “The Last Stylebender” was rebuffed in his attempt to join the ranks of “champ champs” when he failed to win a Light Heavyweight title fight against Jan Blachowicz.
As for Whittaker, the Australian has racked up three decision wins over tough competition in Darren Till, Jared Cannonier and Kelvin Gastelum to earn his second crack at Adesanya.
They both previously clashed in October 2019 at UFC 243, where interim champ Adesanya took the full Middleweight strap off Whittaker via knockout in the second round.
Since then, there’s been a certain amount of gamesmanship being played between Adesanya and Whittaker’s camps.
With Adesanya’s coach, Eugene Bareman repeatedly downplaying Whittaker’s value as a legit contender and implying they weren’t in a rush to give him a rematch..
Nonetheless, with Whittaker not only the No. 1-ranked contender at 185 pounds and the most marketable of the top contenders, this second fight was inevitable.
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