A poor run of form for African fighters in the MMA. A sports that is arguably dominated by Africans right now has seen a recent wind of change blow. Unbeaten records broken and titles lost.
Cameroonian heavyweight Francis Ngannou is now the only African with a world title belt in the UFC. Like his compatriot Usman Kamaru, Nigeria's Israel Adesanya lost his middleweight title on Saturday night. The 31 year old fighter was putting it on the line for the 6th time. It was against the Brazilian Alex Pereira who had already made him suffer twice in kickboxing.
Adesanya wanted to take his revenge was well on his way. He was ahead after the first four rounds. In the first round, he had even almost won the fight by knocking out his opponent with a punch. But the latter resisted and eventually came to his senses. In the last minutes of the 5th and last round, the Brazilian reversed the trend with a series of punches, and won by TKO. The Nigerian thus suffers his 2nd defeat in 25 fights. Alex Pereira confirms that he is really his spellbound.
