Lewis and Whittaker fight for redemption
The last hour of UFC 271 on Saturday night at Toyota Center figures to be all about redemption and those trying to stop it.
The last time Robert Whittaker stood across an octagon from middleweight champion Israel Adesanya, he admits he wasn’t himself and he left the arena that night a beaten man, both literally — he lost on a secondround knockout — and figuratively, as he contemplated giving up the sport entirely.
When Derrick Lewis last stomped into an octagon inside Toyota Center six months ago, he now confesses the pressure he put on himself served as chokehold around his aspirations before the fight even started.
Saturday, Whittaker gets another shot at Adesanya in the UFC 271 main event, while Lewis returns to the cage in his hometown against Tai Tuivasa in the co-main event.
The 31-year-old Whittaker (23-5) is usually reserved, but when he fought Adesanya (21-1) in Melbourne, Australia, he felt an unusual fire inside him. Part of it was being a headliner on a big pay-per-view card in his home country, but the real inner burn came from the sharptongued Adesanya who always finds ways to needle his opponents and get them to act outside of their character.
“Everything got to me in that fight — the pressure, the hype, the build-up, the fans,” Whittaker says now. “He wanted to get inside my head, and he did it really well. I was thinking about the wrong things, and it took so much energy out of me.”
Two-and-a-half years later, Whittaker says he’s taking a much more clinical approach to regaining his title in the rematch, choosing to ignore his opponent’s words and instead focus on technique against a master counter-puncher.
Adesanya doesn’t make it easy though. Sitting less than 10 feet away from each other at Thursday’s press conference at the George R. Brown Convention Center, the middleweight champion told everyone how evident it was that Whittaker couldn’t handle the pressure in their last fight.
“Pressure makes diamonds, and I’m used to that, you see me: I’m shining right now,” Adesanya said. “(My coach Eugene Bareman) said something when (Whittaker) stepped in the cage. He looked at me and he goes, ‘You can see it.’ And, I was like, ‘Yeah, I know.’ Because you could see the moment weighing on him. We could feel that. We could see that … Pressure is really an acquired taste.”
Whittaker chuckled at the comment and later vowed he feels completely different this time than he did back in Australia in 2019.
“It’s night and day,” Whittaker said. “I’m enjoying this one. It’s nice and relaxed … Things between me and Izzy have been quite civil, and I think we’re going to put on a really good show.”
The 37-year-old Lewis (26-8), who holds the UFC record for most career knockouts with 13, also says he feels completely different than he did when he got stopped by Ciryl Gane in their heavyweight title fight at UFC 265 in August. Lewis, who has lived in Houston since he was 13, had the normal pressures of headlining a big fight night in his hometown, but he also added tension when he realized that evening was the 13-year anniversary of him being released from prison after an assault charge as a teenager ended with him behind bars. In his mind, he built up this fairy-tale story he was determined to live, but instead the brawler appeared to be too deep in his own head and never let his hands fly as Gane picked him apart.
“It was a crazy thing that I wanted for my legacy,” Lewis said. “Being all the way at the bottom of my life, and then being the champion of the world. It just would have meant a lot.”
Instead, Lewis, who is the UFC’s third-ranked heavyweight, is trying to fight his way back up the ladder, including Saturday night’s battle against Tuivasa (13-3), who is known just as much for his punching power as Lewis.
“It’s either going to be my head or his head,” said Tuivasa, who didn’t predict a winner in the fight but said it probably wouldn’t last past the first round. “We entertain the fans, so we’re coming here to take heads off. That’s it.”