The mixed martial arts boom in Australia and New Zealand is in full swing, as evidenced by the spectacle that is UFC 243.
Sydney resident Robert Whittaker will square off with New Zealand transplant Israel Adesanya in a middleweight title unification bout that will headline the card at Melbourne’s Marvel Stadium.
It’s a good thing the fight between champion Whittaker (20-4 MMA, 11-2 UFC) and interim beltholder Adesanya (17-0 MMA, 6-0 UFC) is on, too, because it’s a thin card, one which got even more so last week, when former bantamweight champion Holly Holm had to pull out of her bout with Raquel Pennington.
Still, UFC 243 features the familiar parade of names we’ve come to associate with Down Under cards, and has some legitimately intriguing storylines.
UFC 243 takes place Saturday night (Sunday afternoon local time). The main card airs on pay-per-view following prelims on ESPN and UFC Fight Pass/ESPN+.
Without further ado, then, on to UFC 243’s five burning questions:
Will injuries finally catch up to Robert Whittaker?
Make no mistake about it: When Robert Whittaker is healthy and ready to go, he’s been damn near unstoppable. Superlative boxing and an iron constitution pushed his drive through the shark tank that is the UFC’s middleweight division. He’s won nine straight fights since 2014, and his run to a championship after coming up from welterweight provided a model many have since followed on not cutting down to the very lowest weight your body can tolerate.
But then, there have still been issues. We haven’t seen the champ in the cage since his UFC 225 win over Yoel Romero in June 2018. Before that, we hadn’t see him since his UFC 213 fight with Romero in July 2017. His last fight with someone not named Yoel Romero was his finish of Ronaldo “Jacare” Souza nearly 30 months ago.
Whittaker has managed to shake off injuries, illness, and rust until this point. But will UFC 243 mark the point this all catches up to Whittaker? We’ll find out Saturday night.
Can Israel Adesanya answer his final question?
Israel Adesanya has been doubted every step of the way. Other than a gimme of a fight in his UFC debut 18 months ago against Rob Wilkinson (who has not competed anywhere since), there were questions everywhere along the way:
Could the untested kickboxer compete against a grappler like Marvin Vettori? Not Adesanya’ best fight, but he won.
Can a quick-strike artist like Adesanya go deep? He dominated for 25 minutes against Brad Tavares in his first main event.
How will he fare against a world-class wrestler? He sprawled Derek Brunson, then wrecked him.
What about his durability? He fought five times in a year.
Going 5-0 in the span of 364 days to kick off his UFC career, we saw him take the mantle from Anderson Silva as a next-generation striker with an impressive show at UFC 234, then display a champion’s heart in the fifth round to seal his interim title victory eight weeks later to beat Kelvin Gastelum in what is still this author’s choice for fight of the year.
Now stands the final challenge of the fastest-rising star of the Endeavor era. Can Adesanya knock off a competitor who hasn’t lost since 2014?
Is Dan Hooker ready for his real rankings rise?
Dan Hooker has been through three stages in his UFC career. There was a six-fight, three-year stretch in which he reliably traded wins and losses, beating the fighters he should but stumbling against the likes of Yair Rodriguez and Jason Knight.
Then there was a four-fight winning streak, all of which came via finish, in which Hooker (18-8 MMA, 8-4 UFC) seemed poise to break through to the lightweight divisional elite. This was followed by a memorably brutal beating at the hands of Edson Barboza at the final UFC on FOX card in December 2018, one in which, if nothing else, he showed his toughness.
Stage three began with a knockout victory over James Vick at UFC San Antonio over the summer. But was this the start of another big run of victories, one which will make the Barboza fight look like a speed bump in hindsight? Or are we on to anther stretch of .500 fighting? Going up against an equally tough competitor in Al Iaquinta should give us a good indication which way things are going.
How much does ‘Raging Al’ have left in the tank?
We’ll never doubt Al Iaquinta’s heart and tenacity. “Raging Al” has proven over and over that he’s got more guts on his worst day than most of us do on our worst.
We’ll always appreciate Iaquinta’s personality, too. The outspoken Long Islander isn’t afraid to speak up for what he thinks is right, and also manages to be hilariously self-depreciating. That’s becoming an increasingly rare thing in the era of Reebok clones.
There’s a but to this, of course.
Iaquinta (14-5-1 MMA, 9-4 UFC) is 32. He had a fine run of eight wins in nine fights in which nothing was handed to him and he to claw for everything that was his. But he fought three, five-round fights in the last 18 months. The two losses were one-sided unanimous decisions to Khabib Nurmagomedov and Donald Cerrone in which he took a lot of damage. The other, a win over Kevin Lee, was a hard-hitting affair, as well.
Does Iaquinta have another run up the ranks left in him? Is he capable of making adjustments? Does he have his head in things, given he’s started a real estate business and is already (smartly) talking about life after fighting? We’re not sure a win over Hooker satisfies these questions in the long run, but a loss would sure speak volumes.
What does Megan Anderson’s fight mean for featherweight division?
The fight between Australia’s Megan Anderson and France’s Zarah Fairn dos Santos will say something about the future of the women’s featherweight class now that the UFC and Cris Cyborg have parted ways. We’re just not sure what.
For one thing, champ-champ Amanda Nunes will put her bantamweight title on the line against Germaine de Randamie at UFC 245 in December, which means the 145-pound strap will be on the shelf for quite some time.
For another, the only real contenders left in Cyborg’s absence are Anderson and Felicia Spencer. And they fought in May, with Spencer submitting Anderson in the first round at UFC Rochester.
And for yet another, it sure seems to send a message that even on a card this shallow, Anderson (8-4 MMA, 1-2 UFC), a popular Australian fighting at home, has been relegated all the way down to the ESPN prelims opener.
Our best guess here is that with Anderson at 1-2 in the UFC, a loss would mean she would be eliminated from even the very short list of 145-pound contenders, and a win over dos Santos (6-2 MMA, 0-0 UFC) would simply kick any decisions on featherweight direction down the road.
