Israel Adesanya suffered a fourth straight defeat after he fell to Joe Pyfer in the UFC Seattle main event but that doesn\u2019t mean the former UFC middleweight champion is contemplating retirement.<\/p>\n
In fact it might be just the opposite as the defiant Adesanya congratulated Pyfer on a job well done after they engaged in a wild back-and-forth fight before the finish. While it certainly wasn\u2019t the result he wanted, Adesanya didn\u2019t blink when asked about what comes next for him in his career.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou keep going again and again and again and again and again,\u201d Adesanya shouted. \u201cI\u2019m not f*cking leaving. You\u2019ll never stop me. I might get beaten but I\u2019ll always remain undefeated.\u201d<\/p>\n
Prior to the stoppage, Adesanya looked very much like himself in there as he cracked Pyfer with several stiff punches while also punishing the lead leg with a series of nasty kicks. It appeared Adesanya had Pyfer in trouble after battering him on the feet and his confidence was surging.<\/p>\n
But that all changed after Pyfer dragged the fight to the floor and nearly locked on a rear-naked choke submission before trapping Adesanya underneath him as he began raining down blows. Adesanya was just trapped with no escape as Pyfer was hammering away with punches until referee Herb Dean just couldn\u2019t let the fight continue any longer.<\/p>\n
\u201cI expected the best Joe Pyfer,\u201d Adesanya said about his opponent. \u201cI knew this was his biggest fight ever so he\u2019s going to bring his best and he did. There was nothing surprising. I expected the best, and he brought the best.<\/p>\n
\u201cI said before this fight, it\u2019s been 13 months, I wanted to feel like I\u2019ve been in a fight, and he gave me just that. Like I said to him at the weigh-ins, they gave me a shot, now it\u2019s my turn to give him a shot and he earned it and he did so great. So congrats to Joe Pyfer for this.\u201d<\/p>\n
The loss drops Adesanya to 0-4 in his past four outings with three of those fights ending by knockout or submission. Despite the results, UFC CEO Dana White still praised Adesanya for his performance, and it didn\u2019t sound like he was contemplating a potentially tough conversation with the former middleweight champion about his future.<\/p>\n
White has openly told fighters in the past that it might be time to retire but he didn\u2019t carry that same tone when addressing Adesanya\u2019s performance and loss from Saturday.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe looked good,\u201d White said about Adesanyan. \u201cHe looked fast. Using angles. I thought he looked great.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor Pyfer to come in at No. 14 and beat Israel Adesanya, one of the best middleweights ever and the No. 4 ranked guy, it\u2019s pretty impressive and to finish him.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Israel Adesanya suffered a fourth straight defeat after he fell to Joe Pyfer in the UFC Seattle main…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":572234,"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-572233","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\/572233","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=572233"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/572233\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/572234"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=572233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=572233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=572233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}