Saturday’s UFC 263 main event in Glendale, Arizona will feature middleweight champion, Israel Adesanya, defending his belt against Marvin Vettori.
It is a rematch of a non-title bout that took place in April 2018, coincidentally, in Glendale. Adesanya (20-1) defeated Vettori (17-3-1) via split decision in a three-round fight in which Adesanya had his way on the feet, but Vettori staged a late comeback behind his ground game.
Former middleweight champion Chris Weidman didn’t watch that fight live, but he remembers the feedback he received from those who did.
“There was a lot of clout behind Adesanya, everyone thought he was really good,” Weidman told ESPN. “But then I remember it getting back to me that some Italian guy who wasn’t a wrestler was outwrestling him.”
Ahead of this weekend’s championship rematch, Weidman took a closer look at that first meeting. Weidman says there is plenty to take away from it, even three years later.
“It’s really going to come down to strategy, what they bring to the table and what they learned from the first fight,” Weidman said.
Here are his keys to the fight, as told to ESPN.
No. 1: Vettori’s takedowns
If you watch Vettori in the first fight, he got to a clinch position in the first round, which is perfect. He got his hands locked. If you do that, it should be a takedown every time — but he was clueless there. He kept trying to do an inside trip, like three or four times, and it was awful. You can’t get an inside trip on anybody the way he was doing it. You really have to bring your body to one side and commit to it.
I hope he worked on his clinch offense, but that’s just not who he is. Vettori is not a wrestler, and it takes a different kind of cardio to do that for five rounds. He’s more of a striker, so he’s really going to have to change his style.
At the same time, the single leg he shot into a double in the third round — he didn’t even have his hands clasped properly and he was able to pull Adesanya down. Which … just tells me Israel is not that strong. Vettori wouldn’t be able to pull a normal guy’s leg, with poor technique, the way he did in that fight, but that’s something Vettori felt leaving that cage. The grappling exchanges in the first fight had a lot to do with strength. Adesanya is a weak guy for the weight class. He’s smaller and skinny — which is why he has great cardio and great range — but if you grab him, he’s not that strong. Vettori definitely knows Israel is not the strongest dude. He had a couple takedown attempts that were just awful, but I think that’s because it’s foreign to him. If he can just improve his technique, he’ll have an easier time this time around.
No. 2: Adesanya’s feints
Adesanya’s feints are so important. If he’s able to land some big punches in that first round, he’ll probably be able to win this fight on feints alone the rest of the way. He’ll start baiting Vettori with feints and then land the big stuff — he could really pick him apart. Honestly, his feints are probably his best weapon.
I really don’t think there’s anybody better than Adesanya at feints, distance control and creating the dance he wants. Having people overreact and underreact. In the first fight, he made Vettori overreact with feints, and then underreact when … actually throwing — just by feinting. Make him worry about what he’s doing next.
This is the fight Adesanya needs to be fighting. When he does this, he is so tough to close the distance on because there are so many weapons you have to worry about. You can see Vettori getting frustrated, stuck throwing one punch at a time.
No. 3: Adesanya’s problems off his back?
It looks like Adesanya has almost two different lines of strategy that he’s struggling with. One is that you take your time, you conserve energy, don’t rush to get back to your feet — because in that process, a lot of mistakes can be made and your opponent can capitalize. The other train of thought is nonstop moving on your back. If the other guy is better than you on the ground, you keep moving, looking for a way back to your feet.
In the first fight, Adesanya looked like he was stuck between the two strategies and never really chose one. There have been amazing strikers who will literally just hold position on the bottom. Anderson Silva had an amazing career as someone who wasn’t the biggest [and] strongest [or the] best grappler, but if you spent the energy to take him down, he would just relax, stay calm and wait for the referee to stand you up and … [be] less tired than you are, or wait for the next round.
Adesanya has either option available to him, but in this fight I think the way to get off his back is to create frames, get his back against the cage and get back to his feet. Actually put himself in harm’s way, because Vettori isn’t the guy I’m worried about taking my back and choking me out. I wouldn’t mind Adesanya getting an underhook and even giving up his back to get to his feet, because I don’t think there’s much danger there. If you’re fighting a skilled jiu-jitsu practitioner like Demian Maia, you don’t do that. So, it depends on the guy you’re fighting. In this fight, he has to do a better job of getting to his feet and creating a scramble.
No. 4: Vettori ‘bringing his feet with him’
One of the things Vettori struggled with in the first and second rounds is that he didn’t bring his feet with him after the left hand. He throws the left hand, the feet stay behind and Adesanya, being the longer guy, is able to reach him. It’s wasted movement and it puts Vettori in trouble, where he can be countered.
Now, going into the third round, his coaches must have said something to him because he’s a whole new guy. He’s walking forward with his feet underneath him the whole time. He’s throwing the left cross and the right jab comes right after. He’s dangerous with the right hook now. You can see this is making Adesanya uncomfortable. He’s backing up. He’s getting sloppy. He’s starting to throw strikes he wasn’t throwing before. This is the kind of fight Vettori can win.
Can Vettori stay relaxed while bringing that constant pressure? And even when he does, it gives him more options to win the fight, but it also makes Adesanya way more diverse and dangerous because of his counter strikes. It’s almost like Vettori has to put himself into the fire to win. And I’m going to say, Adesanya saw that Vettori didn’t always bring his feet with him, and when that happens, he doesn’t have much power. Adesanya was unfazed by Vettori’s punching power, and I think that will allow Adesanya to open up and become his best self quicker in the fight, as there will be less of a feeling out process.
Prediction: When I watch the first fight and think about this second one, I don’t think either guy has changed too much. When Adesanya is at his best on his feet, he is something to watch. I think the odds are stacked in his favor. I just don’t think Vettori has it in him to pressure and make it sloppy for five rounds without exhausting himself and eventually being put in a position he doesn’t want to be in, getting clipped and put out. He’s a tough dude, but he hasn’t been conditioned to wrestle a guy like Adesanya for five rounds, so I’m picking Adesanya.
The opening weekend of the 2025 MLB season was taken over by a surprise star — torpedo bats.
The bowling pin-shaped bats became the talk of the sport after the Yankees’ home run onslaught on the first Saturday of the season put it in the spotlight and the buzz hasn’t slowed since.
What exactly is a torpedo bat? How does it help hitters? And how is it legal? Let’s dig in.
What is a torpedo bat and why is it different from a traditional MLB bat?
The idea of the torpedo bat is to take a size format — say, 34 inches and 32 ounces — and distribute the wood in a different geometric shape than the traditional form to ensure the fattest part of the bat is located where the player makes the most contact. Standard bats taper toward an end cap that is as thick diametrically as the sweet spot of the barrel. The torpedo bat moves some of the mass on the end of the bat about 6 to 7 inches lower, giving it a bowling-pin shape, with a much thinner end.
How does it help hitters?
The benefits for those who like swinging with it — and not everyone who has swung it likes it — are two-fold. Both are rooted in logic and physics. The first is that distributing more mass to the area of most frequent contact aligns with players’ swing patterns and provides greater impact when bat strikes ball. Players are perpetually seeking ways to barrel more balls, and while swings that connect on the end of the bat and toward the handle probably will have worse performance than with a traditional bat, that’s a tradeoff they’re willing to make for the additional slug. And as hitters know, slug is what pays.
The second benefit, in theory, is increased bat speed. Imagine a sledgehammer and a broomstick that both weigh 32 ounces. The sledgehammer’s weight is almost all at the end, whereas the broomstick’s is distributed evenly. Which is easier to swing fast? The broomstick, of course, because shape of the sledgehammer takes more strength and effort to move. By shedding some of the weight off the end of the torpedo bat and moving it toward the middle, hitters have found it swings very similarly to a traditional model but with slightly faster bat velocity.
Why did it become such a big story so early in the 2025 MLB season?
Because the New York Yankees hit nine home runs in a game Saturday and Michael Kay, their play-by-play announcer, pointed out that some of them came from hitters using a new bat shape. The fascination was immediate. While baseball, as an industry, has implemented forward-thinking rules in recent seasons, the modification to something so fundamental and known as the shape of a bat registered as bizarre. The initial response from many who saw it: How is this legal?
OK. How is this legal?
Major League Baseball’s bat regulations are relatively permissive. Currently, the rules allow for a maximum barrel diameter of 2.61 inches, a maximum length of 42 inches and a smooth and round shape. The lack of restrictions allows MLB’s authorized bat manufacturers to toy with bat geometry and for the results to still fall within the regulations.
Who came up with the idea of using them?
The notion of a bowling-pin-style bat has kicked around baseball for years. Some bat manufacturers made smaller versions as training tools. But the version that’s now infiltrating baseball goes back two years when a then-Yankees coach named Aaron Leanhardt started asking hitters how they should counteract the giant leaps in recent years made by pitchers.
When Yankees players responded that bigger barrels would help, Leanhardt — an MIT-educated former Michigan physics professor who left academia to work in the sports industry — recognized that as long as bats stayed within MLB parameters, he could change their geometry to make them a reality. Leanhardt, who left the Yankees to serve as major league field coordinator for the Miami Marlins over the winter, worked with bat manufacturers throughout the 2023 and 2024 seasons to make that a reality.
When did it first appear in MLB games?
It’s unclear specifically when. But Yankees slugger Giancarlo Stanton used a torpedo bat last year and went on a home run-hitting rampage in October that helped send the Yankees to the World Series. New York Mets star Francisco Lindor also used a torpedo-style bat last year and went on to finish second in National League MVP voting.
Who are some of the other notable early users of torpedo bats?
Corking bats involves drilling a hole at the end of the bat, filling it in and capping it. The use of altered bats allows players to swing faster because the material with which they replace the wood — whether it’s cork, superballs or another material — is lighter. Any sort of bat adulteration is illegal and, if found, results in suspension.
Could a rule be changed to ban them?
Could it happen? Sure. Leagues and governing bodies have put restrictions on equipment they believe fundamentally altered fairness. Stick curvature is limited in hockey. Full-body swimsuits made of polyurethane and neoprene are banned by World Aquatics. But officials at MLB have acknowledged that the game’s pendulum has swung significantly toward pitching in recent years, and if an offensive revolution comes about because of torpedo bats — and that is far from a guarantee — it could bring about more balance to the game. If that pendulum swings too far, MLB could alter its bat regulations, something it has done multiple times already this century.
So the torpedo bat is here to stay?
Absolutely. Bat manufacturers are cranking them out and shipping them to interested players with great urgency. Just how widely the torpedo bat is adopted is the question that will play out over the rest of the season. But it has piqued the curiosity of nearly every hitter in the big leagues, and just as pitchers toy with new pitches to see if they can marginally improve themselves, hitters will do the same with bats.
Comfort is paramount with a bat, so hitters will test them during batting practice and in cage sessions before unleashing them during the game. As time goes on, players will find specific shapes that are most comfortable to them and best suit their swing during bat-fitting sessions — similar to how golfers seek custom clubs. But make no mistake: This is an almost-overnight alteration of the game, and “traditional or torpedo” is a question every big leaguer going forward will ask himself.
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — The once and possibly future home of the Tampa Bay Rays will get a new roof to replace the one shredded by Hurricane Milton with the goal of having the ballpark ready for the 2026 season, city officials decided in a vote Thursday.
The St. Petersburg City Council voted 7-1 to approve $22.5 million to begin the repairs at Tropicana Field, which will start with a membrane roof that must be in place before other work can continue. Although the Rays pulled out of a planned $1.3 billion new stadium deal, the city is still contractually obligated to fix the Trop.
“We are legally bound by an agreement. The agreement requires us to fix the stadium,” said council member Lissett Hanewicz, who is an attorney. “We need to go forward with the roof repair so we can do the other repairs.”
The hurricane damage forced the Rays to play home games this season at Steinbrenner Field across the bay in Tampa, the spring training home of the New York Yankees. The Rays went 4-2 on their first homestand ever at an open-air ballpark, which seats around 11,000 fans.
Under the current agreement with the city, the Rays owe three more seasons at the Trop once it’s ready again for baseball, through 2028. It’s unclear if the Rays will maintain a long-term commitment to the city or look to Tampa or someplace else for a new stadium. Major League Baseball has said keeping the team in the Tampa Bay region is a priority. The Rays have played at the Trop since their inception in 1998.
The team said it would have a statement on the vote later Thursday.
The overall cost of Tropicana Field repairs is estimated at $56 million, said city architect Raul Quintana. After the roof, the work includes fixing the playing surface, ensuring audio and visual electronics are working, installing flooring and drywall, getting concession stands running and other issues.
“This is a very complex project. We feel like we’re in a good place,” Quintana said at the council meeting Thursday.
Under the proposed timeline, the roof installation will take about 10 months. The unique membrane system is fabricated in Germany and assembled in China, Quintana said, adding that officials are examining how President Donald Trump’s new tariffs might affect the cost.
The new roof, he added, will be able to withstand hurricane winds as high as 165 mph. Hurricane Milton, one of the strongest hurricanes ever in the Atlantic basin at one point, blasted ashore Oct. 9 south of Tampa Bay with Category 3 winds of about 125 mph.
Citing mounting costs, the Rays last month pulled out of a deal with the city and Pinellas County for a new $1.3 billion ballpark to be built near the Trop site. That was part of a broader $6.5 billion project known as the Historic Gas Plant district to bring housing, retail and restaurants, arts and a Black history museum to a once-thriving Black neighborhood razed for the original stadium.
The city council plans to vote on additional Trop repair costs over the next few months.
“This is our contractual obligation. I don’t like it more than anybody else. I’d much rather be spending that money on hurricane recovery and helping residents in the most affected neighborhoods,” council member Brandi Gabbard said. “These are the cards that we’re dealt.”
College football reporter; joined ESPN in 2008. Graduate of Northwestern University.
Tulane quarterback TJ Finley has been suspended following his arrest Wednesday in New Orleans on a charge of illegal possession of stolen things worth more than $25,000.
Finley, 23, whose name is Tyler Jamal, was booked and released. Tulane said in a statement that the length of the suspension will depend on the outcome of his case. The school cited privacy laws in declining to comment further.
University police responded Wednesday to an address where a truck was blocking a driveway. After looking up the license plate, police saw it registered to a vehicle stolen in Atlanta. Finley arrived to move the car and informed the officer that he had bought the truck recently. He’s scheduled to appear in court June 1.
Finley transferred to Tulane in December after spending the 2024 season with Western Kentucky. He had been competing for the team’s starting quarterback job in spring practice alongside fellow transfers Kadin Semonza and Donovan Leary.
Finley, a native of Ponchatoula, Louisiana, started his college career at LSU before transferring to Auburn for two seasons and then Texas State in 2023. He started five games for both LSU and Auburn but had his most success with Texas State, passing for 3,439 yards and 24 touchdowns.