Italian – American UFC fighter Marvin Vettori is fighting the middleweight champion Israel Adesanya in the main event of UFC 263. He is looking like a completely different fighter and looks like he can get a win over ‘The Last Stylebender.’

His road to the title has been filled with lots of resilience. Vettori is currently on a five-fight winning streak, and his last loss came in April 2018. Incidentally, the loss was against Adesanya in one of the closest fights of the Nigerian’s career.

However, Vettori’s closest fight was the one he fought before losing to Adesanya. Marvin Vettori fought Omari Akhmedov at UFC 219 in December of 2017. The Italian Dream was able to steal a draw from the fight after being completely dominated in the first two rounds.

In their three-round fight, it was the Russian who started the fight looking fresh. On the other hand, Vettori looked sluggish and slow. Akhmedov started cautiously in the first round but did just enough to win it. He attempted more strikes than Vettori and also landed more than him.

However, the second round was much worse for Vettori. Akhmedov had 80 seconds of control time in the round and outstruck Vettori in terms of significant strikes and total strikes. Vettori was down two rounds and needed a finish to claw his way back to victory. However, he couldn’t get the finish.

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Marvin Vettori and his domination of Omari Akhmedov in the third round

Akhmedov was looking like he was gassed out at the end of round two, and that played a huge part going into round three. Moreover, he made the fatal mistake of starting to swing at the beginning of the round. Vettori avoided all of his big shots and answered back with a flurry, landing some huge shots of his own.

They got into a clinch time after time, and Vettori pulled away with his control time on the fence. They started trading again with two minutes left in the fight, and Vettori again landed more. However, a completely tired Akhmedov went for a takedown attempt with a minute left and regretted it immediately.

Vettori snubbed the takedown and mounted the Russian for some ground and pound. This was enough for the judges to give him a 10-8 round in the third. The fight ended up being a majority draw as two judges scored the fight 28-28. The third judge gave the fight to Vettori.

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