Bangtao Muay Thai & MMA<\/a>, \u201cThe Last Stylebender\u201d reflected on what those battles meant to him.<\/p>\n\u201cFor me, it was never really about him, it was always about me,\u201d Adesanya said. \u201cI knew, technically, I\u2019m the only one to hurt this man multiple times. I knew I could always touch him.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m so proud of what he\u2019s doing now \u2014 two-time light heavyweight champ now. He\u2019s back on top now, about to fight [Jon] Jones at the White House. I hope he never loses [again].\u201d<\/p>\n
Following their MMA rematch, Pereira moved up to light heavyweight and accomplished the rare feat of becoming a two-division champion. Earlier this year, \u201cPoatan\u201d dropped the title to Magomed Ankalaev at UFC 313, but regained the title with a first-round knockout at UFC 320 in October.<\/p>\n
Adesanya couldn\u2019t be happier for his former foe, but admits it was incredibly meaningful to have his moment against Pereira.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hope he retires undefeated [moving forward] because I always knew it\u2019s not about other people, it\u2019s about me. Because after he beat me at Madison Square Garden, people were like, \u2018Oh, he\u2019ll never want to fight him again.\u2018 But I was like, \u2018Yo, Dana, run that shit back. I need that.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd I always knew I could do it. So for this guy, it\u2019s not about him, it\u2019s about you. If you know you\u2019re better than him, f*ck him. Prove it to yourself. Find a way to fight him again and prove it to yourself that you\u2019re a better master at this game than him. That\u2019s all it is.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Israel Adesanya has spent a lot of time in combat arenas with Alex Pereira, and Adesanya hopes his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":375031,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[49,48,641,701,638,82,640,702],"class_list":{"0":"post-375030","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mma","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-fighting","11":"tag-latest-news","12":"tag-mma","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-ufc","15":"tag-ufc-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375030","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=375030"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375030\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/375031"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=375030"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=375030"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=375030"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}