Israel Adesanya ‘Will Never’ Overcome Sean Strickland Loss

Since bursting onto the UFC scene back at UFC 221, and then quickly making his way up the rankings, former UFC middleweight champion Israel Adesanya hasn’t had an easy fight. The New Zealand fighter has faced some of the best fighters over the past half decade and has won most of his battles, but as of the last few years he has fallen a few times.

In an interview with the Who The F*** Are These Guys? podcast, Adesanya’s head coach, Eugene Bareman, talked in-depth about his team and the loss to former middleweight champ Sean Strickland that stung ‘Stylebender’ more than his most recent loss to current middleweight king Dricus Du Plessis.

Adesanya’s Coach Says Strickland Loss Still Burns

One year on and UFC 293 still haunts Izzy

Leading up to Strickland and Adesanya’s battle last September, ‘Stylebender’ was coming off the biggest win in his career. After falling to two-division champion Alex Pereiria twice in kickboxing and once in MMA, he bounced back with 2023’s KO of the year. Adesanya slayed all the dragons and solidified his place in UFC history with that incredible win.

However, being the champ comes with the obligation of constant evolution and staving off newcomers to the throne. Izzy’s next challenge would be the extremely out-spoken contender Sean Strickland, who verbally picked apart Adesanya’s complete existence like a high school bully.

With a lowered mental guard and coming off the emotionally-charged Pereira fight, Adesanya looked mentally checked-out against Strickland, which enabled the accurate striker to execute to the best of his abilities. Izzy’s coach says that loss hasn’t left his top pupil:

Bareman continued: “You just fought badly, and it was unexplainable. It’s intangible. It’s not measurable of what caused it. You just go down a rabbit hole of a million things that caused it.

“But the Dricus fight, he was doing well. It was a great contest, and he got outmaneuvered. He got outdone. You can figure out exactly what happened, follow the path, figure out went wrong, and it’s very traceable.

“Those losses are much more easier to figure out rather than the unexplained sort of losses that kind of leave you scratching your head a little bit. So, he’s fine in that respect.”

What’s Next For The Former Champion

Though Adesanya is 1-3 in last four fights, bigs challenges still loom

MMA is one of the most heartless sports. One day you’re on top of the world and loved by millions of fans, and the next day, you become yesterday’s news and the media is already writing your career obituary. Sometimes, fighters find a second wind in their career after some type of reflection or epiphany that puts their mind back onto a winning track.

For Adesanya, who has seen the sports’ greatest highs of selling out a 56,000 person arena or fighting at Madison Square Garden multiple times, he still has a chance to make some noise in the sport that has made him a fighting legend. At 35, he must not waste any time though. Instead of being the hunter, with his fame and following, he has become the hunted for younger, lesser-known middleweights.

A possible fight for the former middleweight champ could be against fast-rising Brazilian contender Caio Borralho, who is fresh off one of the most spectacular performances of the year:

That would be an appealing fight for Izzy, not just because of the lack of vitriol between the two men, but because Borralho is mainly a striker, which could entice Adesanya even more to take the fight. After both men just fight grueling bouts, a matchup between the two talented middleweights could take place sometime in early-2025.