Pros and Cons from UFC 281: Adesanya vs Pereira

A look back at the highlights and the lowlights from UFC 281.

By: Anton Tabuena | 11 months ago
Pros and Cons from UFC 281: Adesanya vs Pereira
Bloody Elbow 2.0 | Anton Tabuena

UFC 281 is in the books, and it brought a lot of finishes and a chaotic end to a long title reign. Israel Adesanya and Alex Pereira’s MMA bout looked a lot like their last meeting in kickboxing. The longtime middleweight champion was ahead early, wobbling, hurting and tiring out Pereira repeatedly, only for “Poatan” to find a way to land his trademark power shot.

Likely down 3-1 on the scorecards, Pereira came up big in the last round and scored another comeback victory against Adesanya. He won his third bout against Adesanya, and completed a meteoric rise to win the title in just his fourth UFC fight.

In the co-main event, Weili Zhang put on a clinic both on the feet and on the ground, handily beating Carla Esparza to become a two-time UFC strawweight champion.

Below, we analyze the pros and cons of each of the key bouts, with a quick twitter thread that’s short and fitting for people’s social media era attention spans:

And that’s about it. For more social media musings, follow me on twitter over at @antontabuena, and of course you should do that for Bloody Elbow’s official twitter account as well.


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About the author
Anton Tabuena
Anton Tabuena

Anton Tabuena is the Managing Editor for Bloody Elbow. He’s been covering MMA and combat sports since 2009, and has also fought in MMA, Muay Thai and kickboxing.

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