Marvin Vettori‘s been reminding us all, over and over again, at seemingly every opportunity. In April 2018, the Italian middleweight took on one of the most promising prospects in mixed martial arts, a long-limbed kickboxer from New Zealand by the name of Israel Adesanya.
The fight was close. Vettori, a physical and powerful young fighter with good hands and a mean streak, got in Adesanya’s face and gave him some problems. At the end of the night, two judges scored it for Adesanya, one for Vettori. To this day, Vettori feels like he was the rightful winner. Over two years later, a rematch may be in sight.
Both fighters’ careers have diverged wildly since their fight, but both have followed the same basic trajectory: up. Neither has lost since they met in 2018. Adesanya has since been recognized as one of the most stunning and revolutionary talents to ever grace the sport of mixed martial arts. He was pushed to the moon quickly after beating Vettori, winning the interim middleweight title exactly 364 days later and knocking out Robert Whittaker for the undisputed belt in October 2019.
Vettori has followed a much slower road to the top. While Adesanya has fought seven times since he fought Vettori, four of them for a title, Vettori himself has fought just four times. Adesanya has fought six times on pay-per-view, five in the main event. Vettori hasn’t fought on a pay-per-view since he faced Adesanya, and his fight with Jack Hermansson on Saturday was the first main event of his career.
Even that main event wasn’t planned: Vettori was actually Option C, pressed into service after Darren Till and then Kevin Holland had to pull out due to injury and a positive COVID test. But on Saturday, Vettori proved that he absolutely belonged at the elite level, dominating top-five contender Hermansson over five rounds to earn the biggest name win of his career.
Hermansson has made his name off fighting like a bully for his whole career, but in Vettori, he found someone he couldn’t outmuscle. Vettori dropped Hermansson and nearly finished him in the first round, and the Norwegian was never the same afterward. Hermansson was completely unable to take Vettori down and the Italian turned it into a boxing match, outworking Hermansson and battering him with sharp counters and one-twos en route to a unanimous decision win.
Things are starting to fall into place for Vettori. The win over Hermansson elevated him into the top 10 at middleweight for the first time. And after the fight, he set his next target:
The fight makes all the sense in the world. Paulo Costa needs something to rebuild his momentum after eating a humiliating knockout loss to Adesanya in September – after months of bluster, trash-talk and highly involved social media parodies, Costa was absolutely shut down and then suffered the indignity of a celebratory dry hump from the champion. A win over Vettori would reinforce his status as one of the premier middleweight contenders in the world, and it would line Vettori quite nicely up for a shot at Adesanya.
But it’s questionable how much movement there really will be at the top of the UFC middleweight division in the coming months. The presumed next challenger is undoubtedly Whittaker, who earned a rematch with Adesanya with wins over Till and Jared Cannonier since losing his belt last year. But it’s unknown when his shot will actually come.
After knocking out Costa, Adesanya said in the cage that he wanted Cannonier next, should of course he get past Whittaker. He didn’t. But since then, the focus from him hasn’t been a rematch with Whittaker. Instead, it’s been on moving up to light heavyweight for a champion vs. champion fight against newly crowned 205-pound king Jan Blachowicz.
Although the fight was being talked about in relatively certain terms as recently as a month or two ago – according to reports, it was expected to take place in March – it still hasn’t been booked, and Glover Teixeira‘s win over Thiago Santos last month might have altered the plan. In Whittaker and Teixeira, there are absolute clear-cut worthy challengers at both 185 and 205. But we still are no closer to knowing the immediate fates of either champion, and I doubt we’ll know what’s next until the New Year.
Marvin Vettori is maybe one more win away from getting his long-desired rematch, but Adesanya needs to fight Whittaker first. Whether that happens in March, or later in the year, is yet to be determined. Vettori may have to wait a little bit longer, but he’s done plenty of waiting since April 2018. But no matter how long he has to wait for a shot at Costa – I can’t imagine that the fight isn’t going to be made, it makes too much sense – Vettori has done the UFC a great service by stepping up as a new challenger at 185.
Adesanya has already beaten Whittaker once, he’s ruined Costa’s hype, and he started a losing streak that Kelvin Gastelum still hasn’t shaken off. Yoel Romero is no longer employed by the UFC. Cannonier had his shot at prime time, and lost. Till, a one-time title challenger at 170, hasn’t proven yet that he can be a true title-caliber middleweight, having lost to Whittaker his last time out. Vettori might be the only fighter in the middleweight division that you can confidently say is one win away from really justifying a shot at the belt. As some of the other contenders try to rebuild their resumes, that’s invaluable.
Of course, Vettori still would need to get past Costa, a physical force of nature who has broken many strong fighters with his powerful bullrushes and endless series of bombs. Costa was humiliated against Adesanya, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t a fantastic fighter. But in a division where there aren’t a lot of contenders with real upward momentum, it’s a fight to really get excited about.
I’ll take it. Marvin Vettori has earned that much.
The Big Fight 