UFC 259: With a win over Jan Blachowicz, will Israel Adesanya surpass Anderson Silva's legacy?
UFC 259 goes down this weekend, and in the main event, UFC Middleweight champion Israel Adesanya will face the biggest fight of his career when he squares off with current UFC Light-Heavyweight champ Jan Blachowicz.
If Israel Adesanya wins at UFC 259, he’ll become a UFC double champion, but will it mean he’s surpassed UFC legend Anderson Silva?
It’s definitely a question worth exploring, and it’s one that will likely be up for debate should ‘The Last Stylebender’ come out on top at UFC 259.
Why are Israel Adesanya and Anderson Silva so closely linked?
Before looking at the potential of Israel Adesanya surpassing Anderson Silva, it’s worth looking at why the two are so closely linked.
The obvious reason is that Israel Adesanya is currently sitting at the top of the UFC division – Middleweight – that Silva dominated for the best part of seven years between 2006 and 2013.
‘The Spider’ won the UFC Middleweight title from Rich Franklin at UFC 64, and went onto defend his crown against ten challengers, finally falling to Chris Weidman at UFC 162.
But while Silva’s record of title defenses was surpassed by former UFC Flyweight champ Demetrious Johnson in 2017, its worth noting that his overall winning streak was not.
Including non-title bouts, Silva won 16 straight UFC fights before losing to Weidman – a run that seems near impossible to top.
Israel Adesanya, in contrast, has won nine in a row – so he’s still got a long way to go in that sense.
But the UFC Middleweight title isn’t the only thing that links the two fighters.
Israel Adesanya utilises a very similar style to the one Silva used to rule over the UFC. It could easily be argued that ‘The Last Stylebender’ is the first successful fighter since Silva to rely on a striking game based so heavily around reflexes, counters, speed and unorthodox movement.
And of course, Israel Adesanya has also stated on numerous occasions that as a young man, he idolised ‘The Spider’.
In fact, when he fought and defeated the ageing Silva at UFC 234 in 2019, he compared the experience to a basketball player facing off with Michael Jordan.
All great athletes want to surpass their idols, and so it stands to reason that usurping Silva’s position in the pantheon of all-time UFC greats is probably Israel Adesanya’s ultimate goal.
Will a win over Jan Blachowicz mean that Israel Adesanya has achieved that goal?
A win over Jan Blachowicz at UFC 259 would be huge for Israel Adesanya.
It would mean that he would hold both the UFC Middleweight and Light-Heavyweight titles, allowing him to join the small list of UFC double champions that currently includes just four fighters.
It’d also be an achievement that Anderson Silva never managed during his tenure with the UFC.
However, it’s worth noting that the above statement should probably come with a caveat. Anderson Silva did move up to the Light-Heavyweight division during his time as UFC Middleweight champion, on three occasions to be exact.
And each time he was successful, comfortably stopping James Irvin, Forrest Griffin and Stephan Bonnar in the first round.
So why did Silva never go for the UFC Light-Heavyweight title? It’s simple really.
Two of his fights at 205lbs – against Irvin in 2008 and Bonnar in 2013 – were favours to the UFC, who needed last-minute main events to bail shows out.
And while his foray into the division in 2009 saw him easily dispose of a former UFC Light-Heavyweight champion in Griffin, the reigning champion at the time was Lyoto Machida.
‘The Dragon’ was a friend and sometime training partner of Silva, and so the Brazilians decided they’d never fight.
Essentially, had Silva chosen to move up to 205lbs permanently in 2008 after the Irvin fight, there’s little doubt that he could’ve beaten Griffin or the man who dethroned him – Rashad Evans – to become the UFC’s first double champion some eight years before Conor McGregor did.
Therefore, if Israel Adesanya does dethrone Jan Blachowicz this weekend, he will have achieved something Anderson Silva was never able to do. But that doesn’t mean he will have surpassed the Brazilian great.
So what does Israel Adesanya need to do to surpass Anderson Silva?
For many fans, nothing Israel Adesanya does will allow him to surpass Anderson Silva. Alongside Georges St. Pierre, Silva is perhaps the most beloved UFC champion of its biggest boom years – years when UFC titles and winning streaks meant much more than so-called “money fights”.
However, in real terms, there’s one way that ‘The Last Stylebender’ could truly surpass his idol and that’s to keep winning fights.
If he does beat Jan Blachowicz to win the UFC Light-Heavyweight title, then he has a choice to make – does he drop one title and continue with the others, or channel Amanda Nunes and defend both?
He hasn’t really hinted at either, but based on his schedule over the past couple of years, there’s nothing to suggest he isn’t capable of moving from division to division while defending both titles.
If Israel Adesanya can do that, then there’s every chance he manages to win eight more fights in a row – equalling Silva’s legendary winning streak.
And if he can pull that off, then the argument comes down to tricky issues like strength of opponents and so forth.
If that’s the case, then there’s definitely an argument that Israel Adesanya will end up fighting trickier opponents than ‘The Spider’ did.
In fact, you could perhaps argue that Robert Whittaker, Yoel Romero and Paulo Costa – Adesanya’s last three victims – were trickier than the majority of opponents that Silva faced in his tenure as UFC champion.
In all honesty though, it’s impossible to really say whether Chael Sonnen, Vitor Belfort and Rich Franklin would’ve stood a chance against anyone from the current era of MMA. After all, the sport is evolving all of the time.
Essentially, no single fighter stands alone at the top of the UFC’s pantheon of legends, and there’s an argument for a number of fighters as ‘the greatest’.
But there’s definitely levels within that pantheon, and even if he beats Jan Blachowicz, Israel Adesanya won’t be quite on the same level as Anderson Silva, for now at least. In time, though? Anything is possible when you’re ‘The Last Stylebender’.