Israel Adesanya is the Nigerian-born New Zealander MMA artist who currently fights in the middleweight division of the UFC and has a solid record of 23 wins out of his 24 MMA appearances with 15 knockout records. The Style Blender lost his only bout against Jan Błachowicz in his light heavyweight debut for the UFC light heavyweight title.
Now Adesanya is set to face Alex Pereira at UFC 281’s main event. Alex Pereira is a Brazilian MMA artist who holds a record of 5 wins out of his six octagon appearances and lost only one bout in his MMA debut in Sao Paulo, Brazil, against Quemuel Ottoni.
The only man to stop Israel Adesanya is now in the UFC.
Alex Pereira knocked out the middleweight champ in the Stylebender's last kickboxing match.
Poatan makes his MMA debut at UFC 268 🔥 pic.twitter.com/4qLis4dndm
— UFC on TNT Sports (@ufcontnt) September 9, 2021
But the face-off has drawn massive attention as both fighters come from kickboxing backgrounds. In his kickboxing career, Pereira is a legend as the Brazilian held the Glory middleweight and light heavyweight titles. In comparison, Adesanya appeared in 80 matches and won 75 times but never won a major title in his kickboxing career.
“I was coming off a loss that was controversial that I should have won, a kickboxing world title, I was younger then, so I got influenced by people’s words, and I just threw spam right hands at him. Threw a couple of uppercuts, but right hands.”
During his kickboxing reign, Adesanya faced Pereira twice but lost both of their clashes. One of those videos of Pereira knocking out Adesanya went viral recently, while sharing that video, one @UFConBTsports referred to Paotan as the only man to stop Israel Adesanya, who is now in the UFC.
But Adesanya was frustrated about the video, which did not affect him as the last style blender has seen it so many times. He is furious about the video and, indeed, throws hard punches at Pereira to settle the past.
“I’ve seen it, I don’t even know how many times. I’ve never shied away from it. For years, it never really showed up on my radar, but then, once I started to get popping in the UFC, it started to pop up again because he was posting it. And it’s like, ‘Why are you trying to live off me? You already beat me, but yeah, you’re still chasing me because I’m doing way better than you.’ But yeah, I’ve already seen that so many times, it doesn’t affect me. I’ve seen it.”
