I understand Youl Romero's approach of Isreal Adesayna

Listen, did what Yoel did versus Izzy in the cage look odd. Absolutely‼️ In fact bizarre. Your in the twilight of your career, with time running out. A CHAMPION in Izzy blesses you with one last chance to grab the crown, and to the untrained  eye, it looks as if you stood in a weird stance for the better part of the fight. Instead of going balls out to try to snatch a title.

BUT THATS NOT AT All WHAT HE DID.. Listen Yoel is not dumb. He knows how gifted Izzy is at striking. And more importantly...how gifted he is at using space to destroy his opponents.  So gifted in fact , I've caught him several times on tape - testing his finishes not once but twice before finally executing it. In fact he tested his finishing sequence against Robert Whittaker twice before dealing it. This inside of a round and a half. 

Izzy is great at giving the illusion that he is coming forward. But he is actually not. He is almost always retreating backwards in order to deliver... he baits - retreats- smashes your face. All faster than most guys bait. 

  

A master at using faints and every ounce of space that he can in order to stay out of the offense of his opponent. Izzy uses space as a defense.
 And he is so good at it we have to define it as "using space" instead of what it really is 
"retreating"  " backing up"  "running away"
 

So gifted is Izzy that he is almost always doing these things and you can't even tell..
In fact watching one of his fights you would be under the illusion that he stood toe to toe and banged with his opponent the whole fight. Never giving a inch... but that is a optical illusion. 
 

DONT GET WHAT IM SAYING CONFUSED. IZZY WILL STAND AND BANG WITH SOME FIGHTERS WITHOUT BACKING UP.... BUT ONLY ONCE HE KNOWS HE IS SO DOMINANT THAT ITS OVER. 

Yoel Romero had the task of being able to tag and knockout or wrestle down to the ground and submit one of the greatest escape artist and space users and strikers the world has ever seen..He knew for a fact that if he stood to bang with Izzy shot for shot Isreal would bait him in and finish him ... Izzy would have got off his shots, and when Yoel went to return fire, Izzy would have been on the other side of the ring out of striking distance. 

If Yoel participated he would have been done in cardio by the end of round 1. Or at latest the middle of round two, from there Israel Adesanya would actually have already dialed in a finish... and had him smoked. 
Izzy , despite popular opinion. Hits hard as fuck. 

The rumors are true he doesn't have knockout power... he has "turn your lights out power"  which is very close to the same thing but just a tad different. Izzy most of the time leaves his opponents conscious but with a strike so devastating that it makes them blind and uncoordinated.... fucking cooked. The finishes are almost always better than regular knockouts because you get to see his opponent falter and not be able to restore connection to their body.  Like a deer that has been shot but just can't put the pieces together of why it's down and can't get back up. Flopping and taking three steps and falling again. 

Romero was not going to ruin his tough guy reputation to end up like that. 
So he did what he thought was smart. - trick the younger Adesanya,  give him something he has never seen before. 

It didn't work. That's the end of the story.