After his humiliating loss to Sean Strickland, many UFC fans seem to have forgotten just how special Israel Adesanya is. The former kickboxer seamlessly transitioned to MMA and managed to become a UFC champion within 14 months of his debut at the promotion.

And ‘Izzy’ sat down with the UFC production crew to break down his race to the title on his episode of ‘Year of the Fighter’ on the promotion’s official YouTube channel. During the course of the conversation, Israel Adesanya made a surprising revelation about how he picks his opponents.

Israel Adesanya reveals how he picks his opponents and why

During the episode, ‘Izzy’ revealed that he carefully picks his opponents, not in the sense that he chooses to fight opponents he can beat, but in the sense that he picks opponents based upon what they can offer in terms of fan excitement and his personal animosity with them.

“Look at what I’ve done, been in the company for just over 14 months to become champion. You don’t have to like me but you will respect it. I’ve said this before in other interviews, I picked my fights. And when I say that doesn’t mean like I went to them [the UFC] I want to fight that guy,” Adesanya said.

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This, he believes, is the reason that he was able to become a champion so quickly. While this strategy has served the Kiwi well for the majority of his career, it backfired for him in the case of Sean Strickland. ‘Stylebender’ was originally slated to fight Dricus Du Plessis (with whom he was also feuding) at UFC 293, but the South African turned down the fight to recover from an injury.

‘Izzy’ then convinced the UFC to accept #6 ranked Strickland as his next opponent due to the animosity and bad blood between them, despite the promotion’s reluctance. But, it worked in the case of Marvin Vettori, who Adesanya picked to fight because of a very interesting reason.

‘Izzy’ on why he wanted to fight Vettori

Israel Adesanya fought Marvin Vettori in his second fight at the UFC. After a close fight, ‘Izzy’ managed to eke out a split decision, which Vettori maintains was a robbery. While the fight may not have been Adesanya’s best performance, the victory did help him race to the middleweight title.

Adesanya explained that the reason he wanted to fight Vettori was because when he saw him at UFC 219 and greeted him, the Italian gave him a stone-faced look. This stirred something inside the Yoruba who rushed to his coach and insisted he wanted to fight Vettori next.

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“So Marvin Vettori, that was interesting… Before I even I [had] even gone to the UFC, I was at UFC 219 and that was at the end of 2017. I fought some guy on that card and I remember walking past him in the hotel in The Host Hotel, you know. I’m just a nice guy, I’m having fun, I’m drinking, and I was like ‘what’s up?’ and he just gave me this look like stone and in that moment I was like I’m going to fight this guy and I told my coach I want to fight him next,” he added. What do you think about Adesanya’s take on him picking his opponents?

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