UFC 293: Sean Strickland records one of the UFC's biggest upsets with win over Israel Adesanya

The American was given very little chance against the mercurial striker, who was primed and ready to impress in front of his home crowd in Sydney. 

But a determined Strickland bit down on his mouthguard and applied constant pressure on the champion, even dropping him with a thunderous straight right hand in the first round. Strickland continued to piece him up with jabs while showing astute defence on his way to an unlikely but thoroughly deserved unanimous decision victory.

"Am I f****** dreaming?" quipped the Californian in the octagon following the win. 

"Never in a million years would I thought I'd be here. Izzy's a bad motherf*****. He's beat the majority of my friends and even I was kind of doubting myself at times. I worked my ass off. I give up so many brain cells to the MMA gods everyday. This is the first time I'm at a loss for words."

Strickland was only afforded the opportunity for a title shot due to number one contender Dricus du Plessis' foot injury. The win shakes up the middleweight division, which has long been dominated by Adesanya aside from a brief stint following his loss to Alex Pereira, who has moved up to light-heavyweight.

Adesanya - who declined to be interviewed in the cage - also dodged the bullets of the press in the post-fight press conference, simply issuing a curt statement before handing over to his coach Eugene Bareman.

"I had a different plan for this, but again, life throws curveballs at you," the New Zealander told the media scrum.

"Win or lose, I wasn't going to say much anyway, but right now, I lost tonight to the better man on the night and I just want to go with the people who care about me - my team. They are waiting for me, so I'm going to do that, but I'll leave you in the capable hands of a man who is much smarter than me... I'll leave it with Eugene Bareman, who will handle this for the first time."

UFC overlord Dana White confirmed with the media that he would like to see a rematch between the pair.

"I think you do the rematch, absolutely," said White.

"The rematch is interesting. That could be the thing, too. When you think about you're going into the Pereira fight, such a big fight, and you’ve been in there with this guy so many times, and then you overlook Strickland. You come in and I don’t know. I don't know the answers to these questions, but Israel does, and I'm looking forward to hearing it."

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