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Former UFC middleweight champion Israel Adesanya’s fighting future has seemed up in the air since suffering a knockout loss to Nassourdine Imavov at UFC Saudi Arabia. However, Adesanya’s head coach has provided a positive update.
“The Last Stylebender” has lost three straight, and four of five, and hasn’t made a public decision about continuing to compete in the octagon, or calling it a career. Adesanya was in attendance for UFC 314 to watch teammate Alexander Volkanovski regain the featherweight title in the main event, and City Kickboxing head coach Eugene Bareman discussed the short chat he had with Adesanya in Miami.
“The one brief conversation that he had with me in [Volkanovski’s locker room], he said, ‘Look, man, I think I’m going to fight again,’” Bareman told Submission Radio. “So those are the conversations we’re having, like, ‘Yeah, I want to fight again. I want to fight again. I think I’m ready to fight again.’ …
“It’s like we’re having conversations about whether he should fight again, or whether he feels like he should, or he has the feeling that he wants to, whether he has the hunger inside, and, that’s the conversations we’re having. So to be talking about, ‘Am I fighting this or that?’ No, you’ve got to bring it back a level.”
After an impressive six title defenses, Adesanya went on to lose the middleweight title via TKO to Alex Pereira at UFC 281 in November 2022, before winning it back with MMA Fighting’s 2023 Knockout of the Year five months later at UFC 287.
Since then, Adesanya suffered a lopsided decision loss to Sean Strickland, and a pair of stoppage losses to Dricus du Plessis and Imavov — despite looking really good in the early stages of both fights.
It’s clear Adesanya can still get victories inside the octagon, but Bareman sees his pupil as somebody who is more than that: As a fighter who wants to climb back up the mountain to be the best in the world. The question is, does Adesanya want to make that climb one more time?
“I’m being patient. I mean, like, I’m cool with what Izzy does,” Bareman explained.”Izzy’s done everything he needs to do in the sport, went to the highest level. But the reality is, he’s lost three of his last four. He knows the kind of commitment and dedication that he needs to be in the sport. And we just had one of our best friends, a guy who’s the same age as Izzy — might even be older — win the championship of the world, and we both know from firsthand experience how hard that man works.
“Age is not going to matter to a guy when you work like that, mate. … I’m not privy to everybody’s camp and everybody’s work ethic, but that’s the hardest worker in the sport. Age is not going to matter, mate. I couldn’t believe how many people that I was hearing were writing Volk off. So we have a very close friend friend of ours, and we look at his work ethic and that’s the example. That’s the bar. That’s where we got to go, and as he knows, that’s where he’s got to go. And that’s a heavy, heavy commitment to dedicate yourself as much as Volk does. It’s a heavy, heavy commitment for any fighter in their prime, let alone one that’s in the twilight of their career.”