Perth – Former UFC middleweight champion Israel Adesanya went all in on this camp as he looks to regain his title from Dricus Du Plessis at UFC 305 on Saturday night.
“We reshuffled the deck. We just pretty much kept what was useful and discarded what was useless for us,” Adesanya told reporters on Wednesday.
“We upgraded the program itself. Had a preseason, had training blocks, not just going hard, hard, hard, hard all the time, and then getting injured and stuff.”
Adesanya (24-3) took five fights as champion in a span of 16-months. After dropping the belt to former champ Sean Strickland at UFC 293 Adesanya took some time off to recover.
“I’ve raised the level of athlete that I am by taking this break. By doing the right things to let my body heal and heal my body. Even just remove myself from the game completely for 3 months or whatever it was,” he said.
“I know I’ve definitely raised the level of fighter that I am.”
Just recently the a clip of Adesanya speaking about Du Plessis calling himself the real African champion has made the rounds as it was edited to remove any mention of former UFC heavyweight champion Francis Ngannou. Ngannou left the UFC to sign with the PFL in 2023. Since then it seems as though the UFC has gone out of their way to not mention Ngannou in any promotional materials.
Adesanya addressed the clip and the impression that the UFC is attempting to ‘erase’ Ngannou from it’s history.
“Right now I know this competition between other promotions and the UFC and battles, but again you can never erase history because the streets, the internet will always remember. No matter what. I think they’ll fix this eventually but it’s just a lot of chest puffing. The UFC are smart people. They’ll understand and they’ll rectify this eventually,” he said
“You can’t erase Francis’s legacy in the UFC. It’s part of what we’ve done. It’s forever in history in stone. Trying to whitewash it or just not talk about it is silly. I know he’s fighting for the PFL right not, but it’s still history.”
“I’m happy for him. I’m happy for what he’s doing. He just went through something that I would never wish on anyone. We’ve talked. I’ve checked up on him and again I respect Francis so much,” Adesanya said.
“He’s an inaugural part of what we’ve done in the UFC.”
Watch the entire media day scrum with Israel Adesanya above. He challenges Dricus Du Plessis for the UFC middleweight title at UFC 305 on Saturday night.
