Israel Adesanya‘s fall from grace is nothing if not remarkable. After dominating the UFC’s middleweight division in the post-Anderson Silva/GSP era until last year, the Yoruba isn’t even on the title ladder at the moment. Desperately in need of a win after dropping his last two, ‘Izzy’ is set to face #5 ranked Nassourdine Imavov atop UFC Saudi Arabia on February 1. Needless to say, the former champ is hard at work, preparing for that fight.

After all, a dominant win in February may see him get a number one title contender bout against Khamzat Chimaev, who destroyed Robert Whittaker this October to become a veritable title challenger. However, Adesanya’s latest training footage isn’t inspiring confidence among fans. A clip of ‘Izzy’ training with UFC lightweight Rong Zhu is going viral on MMA internet, where the former champ is having trouble dealing with the Tibetan’s grappling, getting taken down by the unranked lightweight.

Adesanya is almost a pure striker but has been working hard on improving his ground game. Of course, if he were to fight Chimaev shortly, his wrestling would be put to the test. After all, ‘Borz’ is perhaps the best wrestler in the entire promotion, and will look to take Adesanya down the first chance he gets. In which case Izzy would be in big trouble, at least that is what the fans think based on his latest training footage.

Fans react to Israel Adesanya’s unimpressive training clip

Khamzat Chimaev finished Robert Whittaker within the first round of their UFC 308 co-main event clash earlier this year. Whittaker, of course, is no slouch either, having been champion before Adesanya took the title off of him five years ago. In addition, Whittaker has a better ground game than Adesanya, which caused one fan to ask: “Imagine what khamzat would do to this man”.

Another fan answered this question and felt that ‘Borz’ would take ‘Izzy’ down and maul him there like a helpless gazelle. That is if Chimaev can get Adesanya to the ground, which would not be easy because of the Kiwi-Nigerian’s quickness and nimbleness on his feet. But if ‘Borz did manage to take Adesanya down, they had no doubt that “Khamzat would kill him”.

The worst thing about Adesanya’s latest training clip, for many fans is that his training partner is much, much lighter than the former champion and is a 1-3 lightweight in the UFC. This is why many agreed with one fan’s observation that “Getting taken down by an unranked lightweight is crazy work 😂”.

Speed, athleticism, and distance management, of course, are Adesanya’s biggest strengths. But since neither of those was visible in the raining footage, one fan had some helpful advice for the former champion: “Izzy is slow and needs more explosiveness and intention in his shots”.

On the other hand, some fans felt that the reason Adesanya didn’t look very good in the clip was because he was taking it easy. This makes perfect sense. After all, Adesanya isn’t going to go all out, full intensity in training, and is not how he would act in a real fight: “These comments are cracking me up😂 Yall see a 30-second sparring video and run with it.” What do you think about the fans’ reaction to Israel Adesanya’s latest training video?