At UFC 305, Israel Adesanya makes motivated return versus Dricus du Plessis - 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