Adesanya’s nemesis vows repeat
The only fighter to knock out New Zealand UFC star Israel Adesanya believes he can do it again.
Brazilian Alex Pereira put Adesanya on his back when they clashed in a Glory Kickboxing contest in 2017.
Pereira rules Glory’s middleweight division, winning his eighth consecutive fight last weekend, while Adesanya has moved on to mixed martial arts to be king of the UFC’s middleweight ranks.
But he hasn’t impressed Pereira, who floored Adesanya with a vicious left hook and reckons he could repeat the result if given the chance.
‘‘The only place in this world that Adesanya is better than me is in speaking English,’’ Pereira, 32, said.
Pereira’s contract at Glory allows him two MMA fights a year and it seems he is keen to enact that.
‘‘You never know what’s going to happen tomorrow. It’s just got to make sense.’’
But he believes a cross-code move may come at a cost in performance, offering a theory on Adesanya’s strike power since he has had to encompass the more allround game of MMA with its floor element of ‘‘ground and pound’’.
‘‘For the sport of MMA, Adesanya is one of the best strikers in the sport, but for kickboxing, he is like many others – a guy that’s good, but over a long time didn’t evolve.
He’s just one of many,’’ Pereira said. ‘‘I’m not criticising Adesanya. I know that when you go to MMA, it’s normal that your striking, due to the wholeness of the game, it downgrades a little bit. I’m sure when I go to MMA, my striking is also going to go down a little bit, so maybe that’s what happened to Adesanya, too.’’
Pereira believes kickboxing’s appeal compared to MMA’s is its lack of a wrestling element.
‘‘We all know that there are MMA fans and kickboxing fans, but nobody likes to just watch grinding,’’ Pereira said.
‘‘Everybody definitely enjoys seeing knockouts. With kickboxing, you already know the knockout is going to happen, and by the way I’m fighting, I’m looking for the knockout every second of the fight. There’s no better reason to watch than just to see the bodies hit the floor.’’
Since losing to Pereira, Adesanya has gone on a streak of nine wins in MMA with five of his victories coming via stoppages.
‘‘The only place in this world that Adesanya is better than me is in speaking English.’’ Alex Pereira