{"id":755827,"date":"2026-06-23T21:16:10","date_gmt":"2026-06-23T21:16:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/755827\/"},"modified":"2026-06-23T21:16:10","modified_gmt":"2026-06-23T21:16:10","slug":"israel-adesanya-admits-ego-keeping-him-from-ufc-retirement-i-know-what-i-can-do-still","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/755827\/","title":{"rendered":"Israel Adesanya admits \u2018ego\u2019 keeping him from UFC retirement &#8212; \u2018I know what I can do still\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">\u201cEven if we take a hit, like I said, four in a row for me, the equity might be down, but we\u2019re still up over most people who\u2019ve come into this game,\u201d Adesanya told Demetrious Johnson on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=bnznNqBLsvQ\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">YouTube<\/a> (transcribed by <a href=\"https:\/\/bloodyelbow.com\/2026\/06\/23\/my-ego-israel-adesanya-now-breaks-silence-on-his-mma-future-after-his-last-four-consecutive-ufc-defeats\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Bloody Elbow<\/a>). \u201cThat\u2019s something I don\u2019t want to rest on\u2026 my ego is very tied into this; I know what I can do still. For me, I don\u2019t want this to be the writing of my story\u2026 this is not how I want to conclude this chapter of my life.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">Adesanya (24-6) went 9-0 under the UFC banner before moving up to light heavyweight, where he <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mmamania.com\/2021\/3\/7\/22317600\/israel-adesanya-jan-blachowicz-live-fight-stream-updates-ufc-259-results-light-heavyweight-espn-ppv\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">fell to Jan Blachowicz<\/a> in his bid to become double-champ. He later returned to middleweight and rattled off three more title defenses before <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mmamania.com\/2023\/4\/9\/23676194\/israel-adesanya-shuts-down-third-ufc-fight-with-alex-pereira-ive-closed-that-chapter\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">his wars against longtime rival Alex Pereira<\/a>, which appeared to signal the beginning of the end.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">\u201cThe Last Stylebender\u201d is currently unbooked at the time of this writing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cEven if we take a hit, like I said, four in a row for me, the equity might&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":755828,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,40762,785,85,1396],"class_list":["post-755827","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-latest-ufc-mma-news","tag-mma","tag-sports","tag-ufc-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/755827","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=755827"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/755827\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/755828"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=755827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=755827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=755827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}