Former two-time middleweight champion Israel Adesanya will return to action for the first time in over a year when he faces Joe Pyfer in Seattle, Washington on 28 March.<\/p>\n
Nigerian-born New Zealander Adesayna hasn’t fought since he was knocked out by Frenchman Nassourdine Imavov last February in a third straight defeat.<\/p>\n
The 36-year-old, who has eight wins in UFC middleweight title fights – second only to Anderson Silva’s record of 11 – has not won since beating Alex Pereira in 2023.<\/p>\n
Adesanya dominated the middleweight division between 2020 and 2022 where he defended his title five times, but defeat against American Pyfer will raise questions about his UFC future.<\/p>\n
Pyfer, 29, is ranked 15th in the UFC’s middleweight rankings and has won six of his seven fights in the organisation.<\/p>\n
Adesayna, who is ranked sixth, has won just one of five fights in nearly four years. <\/p>\n
After defeat by Imavov, Adesanya said he wanted to take some time out before focusing on “helping his team-mates” prepare for upcoming bouts. <\/p>\n
He has also said chasing titles is no longer his aim, with his priority shifting to wanting to fight more freely and take more risks inside the octagon.<\/p>\n
The bout with Pyfer takes place at Seattle’s Climate Pledge Arena on a card which also sees Mexican former flyweight champion Alexa Grasso take on American Maycee Barber.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former two-time middleweight champion Israel Adesanya will return to action for the first time in over a year…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":408366,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[49,48,641,638,82],"class_list":["post-408365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-fighting","tag-mma","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408365","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=408365"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408365\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/408366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=408365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=408365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=408365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}