More than two years after losing his middleweight title, Robert Whittaker will look to reclaim his belt from Israel Adesanya.
Whittaker (23-5 MMA, 14-3 UFC) challenges middleweight champion Adesanya (21-1 MMA, 10-1 UFC) in the UFC 271 main event Feb. 12 at Toyota Center in Houston.
Since getting stopped by Adesanya in their title unification bout at UFC 243 in 2019, Whittaker has won three straight over top contenders Darren Till, Jared Cannonier and Kelvin Gastelum en route to another crack at the title.
Following his title-winning performance over Whittaker, Adesanya has defended his title three times, most recently against Marvin Vettori for a second time in the main event of UFC 263 in June. Prior to beating Vettori, Adesanya attempted to capture a second UFC title when he moved up to light heavyweight to challenge then-champion Jan Blachowicz at UFC 259, but fell short in his pursuit.
Check out the official poster for UFC 271 below (via Twitter):
The current UFC 271 lineup includes:
Champ Israel Adesanya vs. Robert Whittaker – for middleweight title
Derek Brunson vs. Jared Cannonier
Kyler Phillips vs. Marcelo Rojo
Roxanne Modafferi vs. Casey O’Neill
Alex Perez vs. Matt Schnell
Mark Madsen vs. Vinc Pichel
Fabio Cherant vs. Carlos Ulberg
Maxim Grishin vs. Ed Herman
Ronnie Lawrence vs. Mana Martinez
Alexander Hernandez vs. Renato Moicano
AJ Dobson vs. Jacob Malkoun
Douglas Silva de Andrade vs. Sergey Morozov
Orion Cosce vs. Mike Mathetha
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