{"id":472074,"date":"2026-02-13T09:14:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-13T09:14:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/472074\/"},"modified":"2026-02-13T09:14:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-13T09:14:10","slug":"analyst-israel-adesanya-in-cant-lose-situation-might-be-more-dangerous","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/472074\/","title":{"rendered":"Analyst: Israel Adesanya in can’t lose situation, ‘might be more dangerous’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Din Thomas expects Israel Adesanya<\/a> to be a stern test for Joe Pyfer.<\/p>\n

Thomas will be coaching Pyfer (15-3 MMA, 6-1 UFC) for his UFC Fight Night 271 main event against Adesanya (24-5 MMA, 13-5 UFC) on March 28 from Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle (Paramount+<\/a>).<\/p>\n

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Pyfer faces by far his most notable name to date in former two-time UFC middleweight champion Adesanya, a matchup that Thomas admits caught him off guard.<\/p>\n

“I didn’t expect that so soon,” Thomas told MMA Junkie. “I was thinking they would probably have him against like Brunno Ferreira, or the best I thought maybe they would give him is Marvin Vettori or somebody, but not Izzy. I didn’t expect Izzy. But that just means that they have faith in him and telling him either get out there and do work or get to the back of the line.”<\/p>\n

Adesanya is on the first losing skid of his career having dropped three straight, most recently a\u00a0TKO loss to Nassourdine Imavov at UFC Fight Night 250<\/a>\u00a0last February. Despite Pyfer being the betting favorite, Thomas expects Adesanya to have a fire lit underneath him.<\/p>\n

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“He’s still ‘The Stylebender,’ and I think he’s as dangerous as he’s ever been, and I think that he might even be more dangerous now knowing that he can’t lose this one, and he has to prove that to himself. We know how dangerous he is when he sets his mind to something, that he wanted to beat Alex Pereira<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“That was his main goal in life at one point, and what did he do? He knocked Alex Pereira out. So, I know how dangerous Izzy is so it’s a fun challenge for me to try to craft together a game plan, and to instill that and to give my fighter the confidence to go out and use it.”<\/p>\n

This article originally appeared on MMA Junkie: Din Thomas: Israel Adesanya ‘might even be more dangerous now’<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Din Thomas expects Israel Adesanya to be a stern test for Joe Pyfer. Thomas will be coaching Pyfer…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":472075,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[11038,49,48,26723,641,43061,32683,10871,638,1302,191987,82,640],"class_list":["post-472074","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-alex-pereira","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-din-thomas","tag-fighting","tag-israel-adesanya","tag-joe-pyfer","tag-marvin-vettori","tag-mma","tag-mma-junkie","tag-pyfer","tag-sports","tag-ufc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472074","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=472074"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472074\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/472075"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=472074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=472074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=472074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}