Israel Adesanya very nearly locked horns with former ONE two-division champion Reinier de Ridder.<\/p>\n
One of the most accomplished fighters of his generation, Adesanya is currently on the longest layoff of his MMA career, having not competed since his knockout loss to Nassourdine Imavov at UFC Riyadh this past February. But that wasn\u2019t exactly a plan. Speaking on his YouTube channel, Adesanya revealed that while he intended to take some time off after the loss, he was potentially going to step in for a short-notice fight this past fall, before an injury upended those plans.<\/p>\n
\u201cA year without fighting. I\u2019ve never done that before in this game,\u201d Adesanya said. \u201cSo this is new territory, uncharted territory, and it\u2019s exciting. \u2026<\/p>\n
\u201cI came back home, and I was just back into the regular flow of things. There was no inkling like, \u2018I need to fight again. I need to fight soon.\u2019 I was just like, nah, I\u2019m going to chill for a bit. I wasn\u2019t hurt from the fight itself. I just took the time to just do me.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was going to fight last year, but then I got injured in the gym, and then that opportunity got taken away. It was a short-notice fight, as well. And I\u2019ve never done one of those, so that would have been exciting.\u201d<\/p>\n
That short-notice fight, it turns out, was against de Ridder, who was scheduled to face Anthony Hernandez in the main event of UFC Vancouver in October, before an injury forced \u201cFluffy\u201d off the card.<\/p>\n
\u201cRDR. On five weeks\u2019 notice, six weeks\u2019 notice,\u201d Adesanya said. \u201cI was already training, so I was getting ready for a fight. So it would have been like, \u2018Right, I\u2019ve never done this before. You\u2019re fit. Hop in there.\u2019 But then that moment got taken away from me. But that\u2019s, in hindsight, the best thing. Even though I wasn\u2019t happy with it then, it was the best thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Instead, Brendan Allen stepped in to face de Ridder, stopping the ONE champion in the fourth round. Adesanya, meanwhile, recovered and is now set to fight Joe Pyfer in the main event of UFC Seattle on March 28. And while this matchup doesn\u2019t give Adesanya the same opportunity to do something new like the de Ridder fight would have, he still hopes to break new ground against Pyfer.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy ego is still \u2014 I want to shine,\u201d Adesanya said. \u201cThat\u2019s the thing, I always want to shine. And I will shine. So, I can\u2019t wait. I know I can do, and I feel like people haven\u2019t seen my full array of skills yet, and I just want to show off a lot of skills that I haven\u2019t showed off yet. So, in these fights, not that I\u2019m going to be looking for them, but you\u2019ll see. You\u2019ll see me do things I\u2019ve never done before, because I feel like they\u2019ll be presented to me. \u2026<\/p>\n
\u201cI just want to show off,\u201d Adesanya added, later. \u201cI just want to show skills. I want to display skills, you know? It\u2019s about skills now, making money, making memories, making history.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Israel Adesanya very nearly locked horns with former ONE two-division champion Reinier de Ridder. One of the most…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":469353,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,1347,785,85,787,1396],"class_list":["post-469352","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-latest-news","tag-mma","tag-sports","tag-ufc","tag-ufc-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/469352","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=469352"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/469352\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/469353"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=469352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=469352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=469352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}