Former UFC middleweight champion Israel Adesanya has finally broken the silence and opened up regarding his loss to Sean Strickland at UFC 293.
Earlier this month, Adesnaya fell short while defending the 185-pound belt versus Strickland, who was listed as a massive underdog. Despite the betting odds, Strickland took the fight to Adesnaya, dropping him in the first round, and not allowing the two-time middleweight champion to gain any sort of traction for the rest of the bout.
Sean Strickland Vs Israel Adesanya highlights pic.twitter.com/X8tpxu0sqh
— Fight King (@BestFightKing) September 11, 2023
In the post fight press conference following the UFC 293 main event, Adesanya kept his portion of things very brief, and has remained quite silent on the subject. However, this changed yesterday when he took to his YouTube channel to clear the air on one of the biggest upsets in UFC history.
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Additionally, Adesanya claims that titles never mattered to him, and moving forward he will just be fighting “for fun”.
“That just felt like a bad dream,”
“Feeling it, and seeing it are completely different. I called Eugene [Bareman] right afterwards and we talked, same thing, we’re quietly confident. [The fight was] surprisingly fast. I didn’t even know it was the last round, I was like ‘This is the last round? F*ck’. I was like okay, vamanos, I needed to do something.”
“It was just the way I felt in the fight, it wasn’t, eh. It was eh. It was also the way he worked. He never let me get into my rhythm at all… Just wasn’t able to get my rhythm because of his pressure, he was right there constantly. Whenever I was setting him up, because he’s right there, his coach would help him and I’d just be like ‘F*ck’.”
“It was just a good gameplan from their end. For me, I wasn’t able to adjust on the fly.”
“The belt’s never mattered to me. I mean, it does obviously, but how many times have I said it’s just a fancy tiara that brings more money and this and that, rah, rah, rah. That belt’s just a nice accessory. I’ve already got belts, I have many belts. I’m just going to do it again, just for fun. Just for fun.”