#KiwiUFC: UFC Fight Night Auckland Prep #1
Trying to select one person or team above the plethora of kiwis doing tremendous sporting things around the world isn't really a kiwi thing to do. Thus, while it's lovely for Israel Adesanya to win one of those award things, diving to deep into trying to understand logic behind award winners and what not only leaves one frustrated when the wider work of City Kickboxing is among the best kiwi sporting achievements of the past year.
Adesanya is the face of CKB and it was cool to see Mixed Martial Arts recognised amount the generally middle-aged-pakeha sports award voting folk. Even with this recognition of Adesanya's emphatic sporting work, which represents CKB brilliantly, I believe there is still very little knowledge in Aotearoa of who Adesanya is on the world stage.
One of the activities I'm enjoying of late is following Adesanya as he consistently embarks on international media excursions - United States of America primarily. No other kiwi besides jiu-jitsu wizard John Danaher (who receives zero mainstream recognition in Aotearoa) and Adesanya have been on the Joe Rogan Experience. Adesanya's done that twice and no kiwi has visited Hot 97, nor has a kiwi visited the Breakfast Club and I could go on ... and on. Adesanya not only represents Aotearoa with international media, he's representing MMA as well as Africa, which is kinda bonkers.
Here are the current numbers (Tuesday morning) for some of Adesanya's interviews throughout various USA media excursions...
Joe Rogan MMA Show #35: 2.2 million.
Joe Rogan MMA Show #82: 2.5 million.
Breakfast Club: 878k.
Hot 97: 205k.
Ariel Helwani's MMA Show (Nov 4th, 2019): 511k.
This year, Adesanya has already made a trip to Trump-ville to do interviews with Rich Eisen...
As well as Kevin Iole...
Coming in under the radar has been Adesnaya signing with Paradigm Sports Management. That casually puts Adesanya in the same management stable as Conor McGregor and Manny Pacquiao.
Let that all sit in your brain for a minute.
If all of this was taken into account, there wouldn't be any competition in terms of Adesanya sweeping any Aotearoa award show. We're here though to love all the kiwis putting Aotearoa on the map as the greatest sporting nation in the world (kg for kg) and I'd strongly suggest that instead of paying attention to the silly politicians/celebrities within Aotearoa, you focus your energies on the athletes and creatives (Taika Waititi, Fat Freddy's Drop, Leonard Charles, Lorde, Flight of the Concords etc ... etc ... etc) from Aotearoa who consistently perform at the highest level on the world stage.
Other than highlighting that most kiwis don't even know the extent of Adesanya's super-stardom, Adesanya isn't my focus right now. That's because we have UFC Fight Night Auckland coming up this weekend and the fizz is permeating throughout the #KiwiUFC atmosphere.
The brilliance of CKB will be on display via Dan Hooker, Brad Riddell and Kai Kara-France. There's also the presence of Ben Sosoli who has broken into the UFC heavyweight division and returns to Auckland where he grew up before moving to Australia. Another Auckland heavyweight Justin Tafa grabbed an impressive win in his last outing a few weeks ago, which means that in losing Mark Hunt as a UFC heavyweight, the #KiwiUFC ranks have gained Sosoli and Tafa.
Sosoli comes up against Marcos Rogerio de Lima, who has gone win-loss through his eight UFC fights. I'll dive deeper into previewing these fights throughout the week to flood the Niche Cache with #KiwiUFC content, right now though I'm highlighting Sosoli and Riddell as the low key most fascinating fighters for this card.
Coming off a strange two-fight streak of 'No Contest' results via weird antics from his opponents, Sosoli will be eager to command further attention. The heavyweight division is ripe for a re-fresh and wins will put Sosoli at the forefront of that along with Tafa, although Sosoli is coming up a Brazilian veteran and there's nothing easy about that.
There's something very easy about Riddell and that is Riddell easily being the best underground UFC prospect no one's talking about. Coach Eugene Bareman talks about Riddell in a few of the videos below and those who are tuned in, believe that UFC lightweights aren't ready for Riddell's striking; extremely similar to Adesanya.
No one's going to be talking about Riddell playing an influential role in Alexander Volkanovski's run to the featherweight championship, specifically joining Bareman and Joe Lopez (Volkanovski's head coach) in the corner for Volkanovski's win over Max Holloway. We can view that as Riddell's knowledge and skill being at such a high level that he can add to the already talented coaching staff of Volkanovski. That's an excessively impressive sign.
Riddell has spent a lot of time at Tiger Muay Thai, where Frank Hickman is a wrestling kaumatua. Hickman is now spending a lot of time with CKB and along with Andre Paulet, CKB have taken their work to a nek level with the combination of wrestling an striking. All of which puts Riddell in an exciting position as like Adesanya and Hooker, Riddell has the tools to deal with wrestling threats while exploding with the fluid yet precise striking that CKB is known for.
Below are a bunch of Youtube content to set the scene further...
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Peace and love 27.