I want to talk about this one carefully because the result is the kind of result that makes everyone retroactively a genius, and I don't want to be that.
Strickland over Khamzat by split decision is the result that the people who actually watched Strickland-Adesanya 1 should not be that surprised by. Strickland's defensive boxing, his lead-hand parry into the straight left, his refusal to engage in the kind of scrambles where Khamzat's grappling becomes the deciding variable — that is a stylistic answer to Khamzat that nobody else in the division has presented. Du Plessis pressures and gets dragged into chaos. Adesanya keeps range and gets shot on. Strickland, oddly, has the stance and the discipline to make Khamzat fight a kickboxing match for fifteen minutes.
The contested variable was always cardio and takedown defense in rounds two and three, and it sounds like that is exactly where the split decision lived. I have not watched the fight yet as I write this, but a split decision tells you the fight was close, that Khamzat almost certainly won the takedown battle in at least one round, and that the judges rewarded Strickland's volume and ring generalship in the rounds where Khamzat could not finish what he started. That is the Strickland formula. It is not pretty and it is not what the sport markets but it works against a specific kind of opponent.
Where I will be honest: I picked Khamzat in this matchup when it was announced and I picked him by stoppage. I was wrong about the stoppage and I was wrong about the winner. The thing I underrated was how much of Khamzat's mythology is built on first-round finishes, and how little we actually knew about his championship-round grappling against an opponent with elite takedown defense and the discipline to not panic when taken down. Strickland is that opponent. I should have weighted that more.
The question I want to ask the room — and I genuinely do not know the answer — is whether this is a Strickland-specific result or whether the book on Khamzat is now written. Because if the book is "pressure him into the championship rounds and out-box him on the feet," there are maybe three other guys in the division who can execute that, and one of them just did. The other version of the answer is that Strickland is a uniquely bad stylistic matchup and Khamzat goes back to running through the rest of the contenders.
Which version do you believe, and why?