Israel Adesanya is 23-1 as a mixed martial artist and has defended his UFC middleweight championship five times. But when he puts his belt on the line once again in the main event of two-title-fight UFC 281 on Saturday, Nov. 12, in New York, Adesanya will be facing a fighter who has defeated him twice.
Alex Pereira pulled off that feat not in MMA but in kickboxing, with the second of those wins coming by knockout in 2017. Pereira has competed in MMA only seven times, but his three UFC wins within the last year earned him this backstory-driven title shot.
The main card at Madison Square Garden is on ESPN+ pay-per-view starting at 10 p.m. ET, with prelims on ESPN News and ESPN+ at 8 p.m. and early prelims at 6 p.m.
The evening's other championship fight pits strawweight titlist Carla Esparza against former champ Zhang Weili. Esparza (19-6) is actually a two-time champ. She became the UFC's inaugural 115-pound champion in 2014 but lost the belt in her first title defense. This will be the first defense in Esparza's second reign. She won back the belt in May by defeating Rose Namajunas, who had dethroned Zhang a year earlier.
Beyond the two title fights, there will be a top-10 lightweight showdown between Dustin Poirier and Michael Chandler and also the finale of the legendary career of former 155-pound champ Frankie Edgar.
What are the other storylines behind the fights? How are experts breaking them down? What do the fighters have to say? Here is the fight card, how to watch it and a collection of all of the UFC 281 essentials.
UFC 281 fight card
ESPN+ PPV, 10 p.m. ET
Middleweight championship: Israel Adesanya (c) vs. Alex Pereira
Strawweight championship: Carla Esparza (c) vs. Zhang Weili
Lightweight: Dustin Poirier vs. Michael Chandler
Bantamweight: Frankie Edgar vs. Chris Gutierrez
Lightweight: Dan Hooker vs. Claudio Puelles
ESPN News/ESPN+, 8 p.m. ET
Lightweight: Brad Riddell vs. Renato Moicano
Light heavyweight: Dominick Reyes vs. Ryan Spann*
Women's flyweight: Molly McCann vs. Erin Blanchfield
Middleweight: Andre Petroski vs. Wellington Thurman
ESPN+, 6 p.m. ET
Lightweight: Matt Frevola vs. Ottman Azaitar
Strawweight: Karolina Kowalkiewicz vs. Silvana Gómez Juárez
Men's featherweight: Michael Trizano* vs. SeungWoo Choi
Bantamweight: Julio Arce vs. Montel Jackson
Light heavyweight: Carlos Ulberg vs. Nicolae Negumereanu
(c) = defending champion
*Note: Ryan Spann missed weight for his light heavyweight bout, coming in at 206.6. Michael Trizano came in at 147.6 and missed weight for his featherweight bout.
How to watch the fights
Watch the PPV and all other fights on ESPN+: Get ESPN+ here.
Watch the prelims on ESPN News and ESPN+ and early prelims on ESPN+. Download the ESPN App | WatchESPN | TV schedule
Don't have ESPN News? Get instant access.
Purchased the fight on your phone and want to stream on your TV? Find out how here.
There's also FightCenter, which offers live updates for every UFC card.
UFC 281: Expert picks and best bets for Adesanya-Pereira and Esparza-Weili
"Adesanya-Pereira is a matchup of two fighters who are very similar stylistically," says former fighter and current ESPN analyst Megan Anderson. "It's going to come down to the volume and movement of Adesanya versus the power and patience of Pereira. Adesanya is slightly faster than Pereira and he's very elusive -- it's hard for opponents to land their big shots cleanly against him. No one in the middleweight division has been able to figure him out or match his striking IQ, but Pereira could be the one to do it as he already has two wins over Adesanya in kickboxing."
Why Alex Pereira decided to come to Connecticut before the biggest fight of his career
BETHEL, Conn. -- "It's difficult here," says Alex Pereira. He is shirtless and his torso is covered with sweat as he sits on a bench in front of an open window, a welcome autumn breeze cooling off the gym. "It's very difficult."
Pereira is not complaining. It's a little challenging to get fully inside his words, because he is speaking in Portuguese and his words are then translated by the shirtless, sweaty training partner sitting beside him, former UFC light heavyweight champion Glover Teixeira.
But it's easy to pick up on the tone of Pereira's voice. It is one of contentment, mixed with a firm purposefulness. The sense of purpose is what one would expect from a man preparing for the biggest fight of his life on the biggest stage. On Saturday, inside Madison Square Garden in New York City, Pereira will challenge UFC middleweight champ Israel Adesanya in the main event of UFC 281. His purpose for that night is as clear as the blue sky outside the window right behind him.
The contentment, though? Pereira feels at peace in this gym in western Connecticut because of the community he has found here. The connectedness among those who train at Teixeira MMA & Fitness goes deep enough to get gritty. The workouts push beyond self-imposed limitations, yet all who step on the mat are in it together, nestled within a cocoon of motivation and support. The gym is, after all, a family project.
Read the Jeff Wagenheim story.
'You have to prove yourself every time': Frankie Edgar reflects on an iconic 15-year UFC career
I remember the first time I ever saw a prizefight. It was sometime in the 1980s, and I was a young kid. I went to my next-door neighbor's house with my old man to watch Mike Tyson.
It was late at night and a bunch of my dad's friends were there, all hyped up for the big fight. I don't remember who Tyson was up against -- it might have been Michael Spinks -- but I do remember Tyson going out there and getting a quick knockout. The men were pissed that they'd bought a fight that ended nearly as soon as it started.
But even in that short time, it became a memorable night.
Then, I saw MMA for the first time in seventh grade. It was right around the start of the UFC, either UFC 1 or UFC 2. My buddy and I heard about this new no-rules thing, this spectacle, and I went to his house to watch. I was already wrestling by then, so I was interested to see how the wrestlers would do. But what got me was Royce Gracie. He was winning and I had no idea how he was doing it.
None of us at the time understood what jiu-jitsu was. All we knew was this little guy was somehow putting it on these bigger dudes. That's what made an impression on me. I was always the little guy in a fight, too, going back to when I was very young and scrapping with other kids. I was never in a fight where I was the bigger guy, just like Royce in the day.
Now, nearly 20 years later, I'm about to close out my fight career at UFC 281, and I'm doing it practically in my backyard over at Madison Square Garden in New York. There have been a lot of big moments over the years, lots of ups and downs -- sometimes both ups and downs in the very same fight. Here are a few personal highlights from my MMA career and some things I look forward to.
Read the Frankie Edgar-written essay.
Five Rounds: What's next at 155 pounds? Best UFC moments in MSG
I've been fortunate enough to cover UFC events all over the world and I'm telling you, there really is nothing quite like a Saturday night in Midtown Manhattan with all of the history in that building. It feels like everything is turned up a level. I really felt that on the night of the first one, UFC 205 back in 2016, but it continues to happen every time. The big fight feels.
So, before we jump into this weekend's fights, my top three UFC moments in Madison Square Garden:
Inside the intertwining journeys, and friendship, of Israel Adesanya and Alexander Volkanovski
Volkanovski: "I actually remember the first time I met Izzy, it was in Thailand. I'd heard a lot about Izzy and was a fan of his work already. ... I knew he could fight, and that he was one of the best kickboxers in the world and I had him on Instagram. But meeting him in person, he's such a cool dude. We were in the water at the beach and we might have done some sprints or something, maybe it was the stairs, and he was going in the water and just soaking up the energy.
"I'm starting to understand all that now, but he always visualized things like that and soaks up energy from that, and you feel it. It's stuff that you see, it's real, this is Izzy; there were no cameras around, but this was him really soaking up that energy and that's how he's always been. He's always been in the moment and capturing the moment, all that type of stuff, and I was like, 'This is incredible.' It was stuff you might think it was on camera or for the cameras, but he was really soaking it up.
"And I could tell then -- I'm not sure if you were doing MMA at the time -- but I could just tell that he was going to be a superstar. You hang around someone and you just know. I was a fan of his for a long time, but then we started to train [in Thailand] and I got to know him a little bit more [and] we've been cool since then."
MMA's middleweight Mount Rushmore -- Just getting started, Israel Adesanya takes his place
Anderson Silva stands alone among middleweights in the history of mixed martial arts. You can carve that into granite.
If one were to mimic the sculptural design of Mount Rushmore, the grand monument in South Dakota that honors four seminal U.S. presidents, the most honest encapsulation of 185-pound MMA greatness would be this:
Anderson Silva. Anderson Silva. Anderson Silva. Anderson Silva.
But we can't do that.
Although it's indisputable that the proper placement of other middleweights would be on a mountainside miles away and at a much lower altitude, there are fighters who deserve to be recognized. The current UFC champion, Israel Adesanya, is the most notable among them.
From a title fight straight to her wedding: Carla Esparza had big plans
IRVINE, Calif. -- Several cars pull up in front of what is normally a quiet Southern California home. The muffled voice of Matthew Lomeli, a practicing physician, can be heard coming from the house as he finishes up a Zoom call.
Lomeli considers himself to be a private person. He didn't know what he was signing up for initially when he reached out to a potential match on the Coffee Meets Bagel dating app in 2020.
"Usually, I would do some research, make sure I'm not going to get murdered in a dark alley or something," Lomeli joked. "The one time I didn't look someone up and make sure [it would be safe], it was the one time I actually could have gotten beat up."
His match on the app was former UFC strawweight champion Carla Esparza. Purposely hiding her profession in her profile, Esparza listed herself simply as a "professional athlete."
"Being a professional fighter can definitely either steer people towards you or away," Esparza told ESPN. "So I just kind of wanted to keep it open."
The pair dated for two years before Lomeli asked Esparza to get married. The challenge with dating a fighter, however, is the unpredictability of when fights will be booked. After winning five fights in a row, Esparza was expected to be the next challenger for the UFC strawweight title. An opportunity that she knew, whenever it came, she couldn't turn down.
But Esparza and Lomeli wanted to move forward. They spent months planning their wedding, and in the process, Esparza texted her closest family and friends, telling them of their May 14 wedding date. Her text was short and honest.
"Hey, this is the save the date," she wrote. "But just so you know, I'm still waiting on this fight, so plans may change."
The call from the UFC came on March 16. Esparza was to face Rose Namajunas at UFC 274 on May 7. One week before the wedding.
"It put me in a little bit of a spot where I had to make a decision, and it was like, do I cancel it or postpone it?" Esparza said. "And have to redo everything, maybe have to wait, like, months, and all the vendors won't be available. Or do I go through with it and just hope for the best outcome in the fight?"
Simulated boos, a new gym and tips from Henry Cejudo: Inside Zhang Weili's preparations ahead of UFC 268
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. -- It's a Saturday morning in October and Zhang Weili is in MMA gloves and her workout gear, walking to the mat at Fight Ready MMA & Fitness.
A YouTube video with the sound of fans loudly booing at a sporting event is being broadcast over the gym's speakers. Coaches and training partners gather around and join in with the jeers, plus chants of "USA!" Henry Cejudo, the former UFC double champion and now one of Zhang's coaches, yells for her to "go back to China!"
Zhang steps onto the mat, rolls her eyes at Cejudo and laughs. The sparring simulation -- complete with a referee and a faux USADA official pantomiming a drug-test sample collection -- is all part of her completely rehauled fight preparation.
Zhang left her native China last year to do her first training camp in the United States at Fight Ready. She has added wrestling to her game under the tutelage of Cejudo, a 2008 Olympic gold medalist. Eric Albarracin, Cejudo's longtime coach, now refers to Zhang as "The Great Sprawl of China." Perhaps most importantly, Zhang is working with mindset coach Mike Moor to tackle some internal turmoil.