Whittaker survived round 4, but round 5 was harder, and this is where the stance switch came back into play. Romero spending most of the fight orthodox left him with a power-jab and a crushing left hook, but it also could’ve ultimately been to set up this final trap. It didn’t ultimately win him the fight, but it came very close.

Whittaker continued to play a more careful game at range, and took the risk of entering with a straight-right; it landed partially, and Romero responded by grabbing a collar-tie and throwing a right that Whittaker looked off. What Robert missed was that Romero shifted through the right, re-entering southpaw. Whittaker threw a jab and looked to weave under Romero’s return as he had before, to take himself past Yoel’s lead-shoulder, but as he popped up, Romero had simply followed him; Whittaker had weaved in the direction of Romero’s now rear-hand, and paid dearly for it as Romero bludgeoned him.

Romero lost a tight split, which was probably better for the division as he had missed weight; Whittaker was still the legitimate champion, due to the points he accrued in 1/2/4 as Romero took his time off. But the cracking fight forced Whittaker out of action for another year afterwards, and as he went from Rulebender to Stylebender, Whittaker sustained the most conclusive loss of his career.

Romero may not be the man to point to if Whittaker declines further, as for all his undeniably admirable greatness, “The Reaper” proved as physically brittle as he was mentally tough; Whittaker breaking everything and sustaining a hernia that pulled him out of UFC 234 can’t reasonably be put all on Yoel. But the mileage he accrued was real and formidable, and there’s a good chance Romero performing out of his skin took Whittaker out of his prime in a win. As for Romero, he also returned a year later, and looked (even in a tight loss to the marauding Paulo Costa) as timeless an athlete as he ever has.

Concluding Thoughts

Yoel Romero isn’t just a top-middleweight, nor just one of those “top fighters never to win a belt”; while he is both of those things, they both struggle to fully define what has left him so special in a field so violent. Any sort of brief description would, in fact; Romero’s career and development has proven as complex as his game has become in the process. Even without winning the belt, Romero has a case for being the greatest middleweight ever; the generation that followed Silva, Weidman and the Strikeforcers, all fell to his craft and physicality, and his case for winning the Whittaker rematch elevates him even further. His form at 225 also has a case for being (along with Chad Mendes at UFC 179) one of the scariest title-challengers, in a manner of speaking, to ever fight; as a synthesis of his natural intelligence as a fighter and all the discrete skills he picked up along the way, it was legitimately brilliant. Also in terms of late-career revivals, Romero’s might be the most compelling; a 40-year-old learning all the skills he did to give a young bright champion absolute hell is a story that should be lauded more than it is.

If Adesanya beats a version of Romero that looks to have kept what made him so dangerous, it would be one of the best wins ever; if Romero finds a way to win, he’d have an argument for being one of the greatest, period. One might not give Romero a great chance, with everything working against him; a smart and capable champion, his age and time in the game, the mileage he sustained on his last run. All that would be completely fair, a reason to completely disregard the chances of anyone else; however, it has historically been the errand of only the greatest fools to count out Yoel Romero, the eater of souls and the drinker of youth.

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