{"id":563441,"date":"2026-03-25T13:53:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-25T13:53:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/563441\/"},"modified":"2026-03-25T13:53:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-25T13:53:09","slug":"israel-adesanya-explains-why-he-thinks-he-may-have-been-underappreciated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/563441\/","title":{"rendered":"Israel Adesanya explains why he thinks he may have been underappreciated"},"content":{"rendered":"

UFC star Israel Adesanya has spoken about the run he had as middleweight champion in the promotion.<\/p>\n

This weekend, Israel Adesanya will return to action and will try to get himself back in the win column after a poor run of form recently. He will collide with Joe Pyfer, and at the age of 36, he is looking to prove that he still has what it takes<\/a> to be a legitimate player in the middleweight division.<\/p>\n

RELATED: Alex Pereira shares motivational message for Israel Adesanya ahead of UFC Seattle comeback<\/a><\/p>\n

Once upon a time, of course, Adesanya was the king at 185 pounds, ruling over the division with an iron fist. Nowadays, the champion is Khamzat Chimaev, and he will defend that strap against Sean Strickland later this year.<\/p>\n

Ahead of his comeback, Adesanya had the folowing to say about being an active champion at the elite level.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Adesanya talks about being underappreciated<\/p>\n

\u201cLook at the middleweight division now,\u201d Adesanya told ESPN MMA. \u201cKhamzat (Chimaev) was a very active guy coming up, smoking everybody, fighting multiple times, sometimes twice in a month, even at one point. And now that he\u2019s champion, I\u2019m not sure what the deal is. Is it VISA issues? Injuries? I\u2019m not sure, but now he\u2019s got a fight coming up. You know, the last active champion was me.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe last guy who put it on the line, regardless, called out the best, was me. So yeah, that\u2019s one thing I can say that people didn\u2019t appreciate until \u2013 even I didn\u2019t appreciate until now that I\u2019m here watching it, and I\u2019m like, \u2018Damn. This game is slow and just stuck without me.\u2019 That, and I\u2019m sure there\u2019s other things as well, but that\u2019s one thing I can say that people didn\u2019t appreciate, even I might not have appreciated, was how active I was and how much I gave to the game while I was holding the belt.\u201d<\/p>\n

Quotes via MMA Junkie<\/a><\/p>\n

Will Stylebender get the job done on Saturday night? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below, BJPENN Nation!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"UFC star Israel Adesanya has spoken about the run he had as middleweight champion in the promotion. This…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":563442,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,785,85],"class_list":["post-563441","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-mma","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563441","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=563441"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563441\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/563442"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=563441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=563441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=563441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}