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Andreas Hale, ESPN
FROM HIS UFC debut on Feb. 11, 2018, to his title loss to Sean Strickland on Sept. 10, 2023, Israel Adesanya was one of the most active fighters on the UFC roster. He had 16 fights in that time frame (an average of three fights a year), including 11 consecutive title bouts. Adesanya might have even improved on that number without the COVID-19 pandemic grinding the world to a halt.
However, the breakneck pace wore him down. He split a pair of fights with his longtime rival Alex Pereira in which he lost and regained the middleweight title in six months while nursing a knee injury. His public feuds with Paulo Costa and Marvin Vettori were tiresome. “It’s a lot to promote the fights,” Adesanya told ESPN, saying the “mind games” are just as taxing as the fights. By the time he began his second run as champion, he was out of gas.
In hindsight, it was understandable that his competitive battery may have been drained before defending the title against Strickland at UFC 293 in Sydney, Australia, in September 2023. After all, Adesanya admits that he had difficulty getting up for Strickland when it was a fight with Dricus Du Plessis that he had intensely pursued. But being the fighting champion he was, the New Zealander wouldn’t pass on the opportunity to fight so close to home, even if he was worn down and disinterested in Strickland as an opponent.
“Even before the Pereira fight [in 2022], it was a hectic schedule for me,” Adesanya said when asked when he started to feel burnout and considered taking a break from the sport. “After the Strickland fight my body just said that I’m done and that I needed to chill out.”
A month after his loss to Strickland, Adesanya appeared on the New Zealand radio show “The Rock” and stated that he would not be fighting for “a long time.” But just how long did he mean?
Adesanya told The Mac Life “2027” last October about his return while in Riyadh for Francis Ngannou‘s boxing match with Tyson Fury. For one of the UFC’s most active fighters, the idea of an extended hiatus left many questioning if he still had the desire to fight and if the career of “The Last Stylebender” was reaching its final chapter.
Fortunately, the world won’t have to wait much longer as Adesanya will make his highly anticipated return at UFC 305 to challenge rival Du Plessis for the middleweight championship in Perth, Australia.
By the time Adesanya steps into the cage, his sabbatical will have lasted just over 11 months. His hiatus included two months where he didn’t step in a gym for “his own sanity.”
“I had no idea how long I’d be gone but I knew it wasn’t going to be until 2027,” Adesanya said. “That was a joke. Don’t worry. I’m back now.”
The time away allowed the 35-year-old to rethink how to be a professional athlete, along with finding the proper motivation to get into the Octagon, before his fire to compete could be completely extinguished.
“Heavy is the head that wears the crown and I have both a big ass head and a big ass crown,” Adesanya half-heartedly joked about the burnout he experienced along with the blow to the ego he dealt with by losing to someone he was heavily favored to beat (-650 to win, via ESPN BET) by oddsmakers against Strickland. “[The loss] was a lot to deal with. I’m only human and there was only so much my mind and body could take.”
1:27
Sonnen: The belt has nothing to do with it for Adesanya, it’s personal
Chael Sonnen breaks down the heated rivalry between Israel Adesanya and Dricus Du Plessis ahead of their championship clash at UFC 305.
A LARGE PART of Adesanya’s failure to perform at UFC 293 had to do with how he took care of his body.
Adesanya explained on his YouTube channel following the loss to Strickland that his performance was something out of a “bad dream” where he couldn’t muster up the energy to perform at a high level.
He didn’t make any excuses and gave proper credit to Strickland’s gameplan that night, which wouldn’t allow Adesanya to get into a rhythm, but it was clear to anyone watching that it wasn’t quite the Adesanya who tore through the 185-pound division.
As he approaches his fight with Du Plessis, one of the biggest lifestyle changes that Adesanya has made is focusing on his diet in order to reach peak performance on fight night. In reality, Adesanya was eating “Uber Eats every meal” and not consuming the diet associated with a championship athlete.
“What I would do back in the day is I would wake up, go to the gym, train and then I’d have breakfast,” Adesanya said on his YouTube channel of his poor eating habits. “That’s not good because you’re burning other things that are fuel sources that aren’t meant to be fuel sources.
“It wasn’t really bothering me and I was able to get away with it. I was still performing better than everyone else … but now I’m 35 and I realize you have to optimize yourself.”
Photos of Adesanya’s body transformation surfaced on social media ahead of his fight with Du Plessis, and the lifestyle changes appear to have had a positive effect on his physique.
“I stare at myself in the mirror because I’ve never seen myself in this kind of shape,” he said. “That’s due to eating properly, having good sleep and living like a proper athlete. Father Time always wins and at 35 my body can’t handle the lifestyle I had at 26. I had to be humble enough to understand that.”
Adesanya wasn’t the only fighter who needed to take a hiatus in order to heal and reset. Jose Aldo spent 20 months away from the Octagon after losing to Merab Dvalishvili in 2022 and looked phenomenal upon his return against Jonathan Martinez earlier this year. Brandon Moreno recently announced a self-imposed sabbatical following his loss to Brandon Royval and cited the need to “rest a bit” before stepping back into competition.
Plenty of fighters have taken time off. In many cases, the hiatus allowed them to figure out what went wrong and correct it.
Although they have had different career trajectories, Miesha Tate can relate to Adesanya’s need to take a break from MMA. The former UFC women’s bantamweight champion retired after an upset loss to Raquel Pennington in 2016 and stayed away from the sport until her return in 2021.
“When I retired from the sport, I felt that I was burning the candle at both ends for so long,” Tate told ESPN. Tate had fought three times in 2016, the most she had fought in a calendar year since 2010. She regained the bantamweight title by submitting Holly Holm, dropped it to Amanda Nunes in the subsequent fight and then turned in a spiritless performance against Pennington.
“I was carrying on too long without stopping to figure out what was wrong with me,” Tate said. Even though she defeated Holm, Tate admits she was already worn down by the constant cycle of training and competing until she finally burned herself out. “It became too much and if you keep fighting in a situation where you are already carrying a massive physical and mental load, it can leave you in a terrible place.
“There comes a point where you have to realize we’re not robots, we’re humans. And suppressing emotion only works for so long. Eventually, it comes out, and when it does, sometimes it’s just too much to bear.”
Like Adesanya, as long as Tate was winning, everything was OK, even when it wasn’t.
“All the wins had fixed whatever problems I had, or so I thought,” she said. “But it was a pseudo-fix that never really fixed anything. And that’s how it gets addicting. Winning is like a drug, and it can be misleading because you enjoy the high and it masks whatever is wrong. But when I lost two fights in a row, I had to face the truth.”
Since returning in 2021, Tate has gone 2-2. While the record may not suggest it, “Cupcake” said that she has never felt better mentally and physically than she has since returning and she cites her most recent win against Julia Avila where she felt at her absolute best.
“I was just on — and I’m talking very on,” Tate said of her submission win. “I knew exactly what I was going to do and I was actually okay with any outcome as long as I put my best effort out there. It took the weight of winning off my shoulders. People saw the performance but they were unable to see what I was feeling inside with the mental and emotional changes. It all came full circle.”
1:02
Israel Adesanya pushes UFC to acknowledge Francis Ngannou’s legacy
Israel Adesanya sits down before his UFC 305 title fight and praises the history of the “Three Kings” while advocating for the UFC to recognize Francis Ngannou.
AFTER BEING ON top for as long as Adesanya was, it became harder to find motivation for fights.
Before taking his leave, Adesanya admits that he battled “boredom” in fights (his second with Vettori, for example) due to his ability to use his superior striking to easily outpoint his opponents. Eventually, a combination of a bad diet and lack of motivation culminated in his listless performance against Strickland.
“When you have a run like I have had it’s a lot to constantly have this target on your back and you have to repeatedly defend yourself over and over again,” he said.
Adesanya hopes it will come full circle for him, but a little extra motivation in the form of his opponent doesn’t hurt, either. UFC 305 will mark the first time two African-born fighters will headline a UFC event for a world title. Adesanya was born in Lagos, Nigeria, but currently resides in Auckland, New Zealand, while Du Plessis was born and raised in Pretoria, South Africa. Adesanya placed Du Plessis on his radar in 2020 when the South African proclaimed that he wanted to be the first “real” African champion.
Adesanya has vowed to make Du Plessis pay for what he believes is the disrespect of the African-born UFC champions (Francis Ngannou, Kamaru Usman and Adesanya) that came before him.
“He knows what he said,” the former champion said. “I’ll make him take accountability for it in the Octagon.”
Adesanya denies that Du Plessis and the opportunity to become the second fighter in UFC history to be a three-time world champion in the same weight class were the primary motivations for his return to the Octagon. Instead, the time off has rekindled his love for competition.
“I feel like when athletes need to take time away it’s because they have to find out how to fall in love with the sport again because it’s not the same relationship they had at the beginning of their career,” Tate said.
It didn’t take long for Adesanya to fall back in love with MMA, although he stated that his approach to fighting in this chapter of “The Last Stylebender” will be different than the one that preceded it.
“I’m done with fighting like that,” Adesanya said when asked if he would return to the hectic pace he fought at before the hiatus. “I’m slowing down now. Most champions fight once a year and here I was fighting three times a year as a champion. It’s a good time to slow it all down.”
Adesanya is no longer bored, operating on limited sleep or getting by on fast food. And if he was that great at doing what he did back then, imagine what this fully focused and motivated version of Adesanya has in store for his opponent at UFC 305.
“This feels like my first time [in the UFC] all over again,” he said. “I’m back where it all started for me at UFC 221 in Perth, Australia. It’s the old Izzy, but also old Izzy, if you get what I’m saying. It’s both the Izzy from before and a more mature version who has learned a lot over the past 11 months.
“I am here to hunt everyone’s souls.”