“I’ll never fight in Auckland again, in New Zealand… What they did to Dan Hooker,” said Israel Adesanya back in 2022, when the fighters couldn’t get rooms in their country due to COVID-19 restrictions. He further emphasized that he would love to fight in Australia than in New Zealand. Still, the wheel of fortune appears to have turned against him as after the Sean Strickland match, Adesanya’s POV has completely changed and Dricus Du Plessis has now exposed it.

The current middleweight champion of the world, Dricus Du Plessis is about to defend his title against Israel Adesanya, who is coming from a year-long hiatus. At the UFC 305 pre-fight media interaction ‘StillKnocks’ revealed that Adesanya was reluctant to fight in Perth. Let us get into this.

Dricus Du Plessis exposed Israel Adesanya’s reluctance to fight in Australia

The last time Israel Adesanya fought in Australia, he faced a humiliating defeat at the hands of Sean Strickland, who was immensely loved by the Australian crowd. The American fighter got support from the crowd despite fighting in the enemy’s territory. This appears to have affected Adesanya on a spiritual level as ‘Stylebender’ considered Australia to be his second home after New Zealand.

Now that h͏e is͏ ͏set to st͏ep ins͏͏ide t͏he ͏Oct͏ago͏n again in͏ Au͏strali͏a,͏ Dricus Du Plessis h͏as͏ com͏e f͏o͏rward͏ to reveal some unkn͏ow͏n fa͏cts͏ that w͏e͏͏re supposed t͏o rema͏in hi͏dden.“Yeah, I mean, I’ve known that I was going to fight on this date for quite some time. Whether it was going to be Israel Adesanya, who you originally didn’t want to fight in Australia at all,” said Du Plessis.

He further added, “I’m assuming it has something to do with the Strickland fight and the crowd not really getting behind him. But for me, it didn’t matter because we knew that the Springboks are playing, and the UFC wanted to make it happen. It was basically a done deal quite some time ago, a couple of months back, that I was going to fight on this date in Australia. So I’ve been preparing for this fight; it wasn’t necessarily to prepare for Israel Adesanya.”

Dricus Du Plessis believes that he would receive the same level of acceptance as Sean Strickland when he fights Adesanya. Well, why did Strickland get much love from the Australian crowd? According to Robert Whittaker, it’s because of the fact that ‘Stylebender’ is a bit unlikeable.

Robert Whittaker was not surprised to see love for Strickland

Many within the MMA community were surprised to witness such love for Sean Strickland at UFC 297. Well, even ahead of his fight when ‘Tarzan’ was just casually venturing around Australia with his girlfriend, he got immense respect and love from the people. Former Australian middleweight champion, Robert Whittaker is actually not surprised by it.

While having a conversation with ‘The MMAHour’, Whittaker said, “No, I would’ve been surprised the other way.I don’t know, and everybody knows I’m not friends with Izzy. I don’t hate the guy, but I’m not friends with him by any means. We just rub each other the wrong way. And he seems to rub a lot of people the wrong way. And I’m going to say, Sean, you know, he was wearing the [Crocodile Dundee] hat. He was wearing the hat. That’s something. Maybe that’s all it takes.”

What are your thoughts on Du Plessis’s comments on Israel Adesanya? State your thoughts in the comments below.