UFC middleweight Cody Brundage has weighed in on Sean Strickland middleweight champion at UFC 293, as well as discussing a potential rematch.
Strickland travelled across the world to take on his -600 opponent. However, he produced one of the greatest UFC upsets when he walked Adesanya down to a unanimous 49-46 points decision.
Many wrote the American off before the fight started and Brundage, a fellow 185-er, gave his opinion on the fight in an exclusive interview with CSUK, saying the 32-year-old deserves more credit from the MMA community.
He said: “I feel like he [Strickland] deserves a lot more credit than people are giving him, even Dana [White] was like ‘You know, Izzy just had an off-night, sometimes it’s like that’.
“And I think a big part of that was Sean’s style was really tough for Izzy – how many people do you see walk Izzy down? Like, not really [many], [Alex] Pereira a little bit but he didn’t do it the way Sean Strickland did it, Sean Strickland did it for five rounds, won 4-1 but they easily coulda said he won the second [round] still, it wasn’t a blowout.
“I think if you wanna beat Sean Strickland you gotta be able to threaten the wrestling, just to stop the pressure. And so if they run that fight back immediately, I don’t know if Izzy has the tools to… like obviously he can knock anyone out, he’s a tremendous striker but I don’t know if he has the tools to beat Sean over five rounds.
“If you asked me on Friday night, I would’ve been like ‘For sure, Izzy can beat anyone’ but just watching the way that fight went down, I don’t see how he’s gonna stop the pressure unless he knocks him out.”
Cody Brundage States Khamzat Chimaev Makes ‘Business’ Sense as Next Opponent for Sean Strickland
Adesanya is now 1-2 in his last three title fights, and while the UFC president called for an immediate rematch in his post-event press conference the middleweight division has a host of contenders ready to face Strickland if given the opportunity.
Jared Cannonier weighed in as the backup on Saturday night and, although only ranked #4 in the division, defeated the new champion via split decision at the end of 2022. Dricus Du Plessis is the current #1 contender after producing his own upset earlier this year by knocking out Robert Whittaker at UFC 290. Finally, UFC 294 in Abu Dhabi sees the currently unranked superstar Khamzat Chimaev take on former title challenger Paulo Costa in a matchup that could produce the opponent for Strickland’s first title defence.
On the next title shot, Brundage said: “I think Dricus definitely deserves it, [but] it’ll be interesting to see what happens with Khamzat and Costa.
“If Khamzat can run through Costa like he’s run through everyone else, I think maybe, I think Dricus deserves it but from a business side if I’m the UFC, I’m thinking maybe put Khamzat against Sean if you don’t do the rematch and find a way to do Izzy vs Dricus.
“Just because that’s their money fight right, everyone wants to see that – and they could do what they do with the BMF belt and make up a title. ‘The King of Africa’ belt, that’ll get people really in tune to wanna watch it!
“The UFC’s funny man, we don’t make gimmick fights unless it makes sense money-wise, so that Dricus-Izzy fight is not a fight they wanna miss [out] on regardless of if it’s for a championship or not, it’ll be interesting to see.”
Cody Brundage Full Exclusive Interview
You can watch the full interview with Brundage below:
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Featured image credits to Embed from Getty Images
