Israel Adesanya, the UFC middleweight champion, is set to take on his old rival Robert Whittaker at UFC 271. This intriguing title rematch will take place inside the Toyota Center, in Houston, Texas, on 13th February.

Ahead of this grudge rematch, ‘The Last Stylebender’ is attending many interviews. Recently, he sat in conversation with the Brett Okamoto of ESPN, where Izzy revealed that  2021 was a lackluster year for him.

Izzy competed in two fights last year. He moved up to the light heavyweight division only to lose against the champion Jan Blachowicz at UFC 259. Later in his second fight, Izzy took on Marvin Vettori, which he described to be one of the most boring fights of his career.

He said, “Last year was my, to be honest, most lackluster year in my UFC career. I feel like it was just two fights. I went up to light heavyweight filled that side mission. Then I defended my belt at middleweight.”

“And there was a point in that fight I got bored. Like my coach was like, don’t get bored Izzy, stay in it. And I remember he said that, and I was like, yeah, true because he could notice. I don’t know what he saw, but he just noticed I switched off.” 

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“I was just like, man, this isn’t fun anymore. Because the guy was already fired. He wasn’t trying to win, he was trying to survive. So I was like I am the one with the belt. You know you are being super defensive. So yeah, but let’s not give him too much time. Because you know he will tweet about this for the next week and a half,” Izzy concluded.

Israel Adesanya wants three fights this year

‘The Last Stylebender’ made his UFC debut in 2018. In that year, Adesanya competed in a total of four fights. And he defeated all of his four opponents, two via a knockout. He earned three ‘Performance Of The Night’ bonuses in his debut year.

Later in 2019, Izzy fought three bouts, in which he defeated the UFC legend, Anderson Silva. And in his second bout, Izzy became the interim middleweight champion. In just two years of his debut, ‘Stylebender’ became the new middleweight champion of UFC in 2019.

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Later, in 2020, Izzy defended his gold twice. 2018 and 2019 were some of the best years of Izzy’s UFC career. However, in 2021, the latter tasted his first UFC defeat.

UFC 271 is going to be his first fight of this year. Interestingly, in the same interview, Izzy said he wants three fights this year. The latter is a pay-per-view star of the promotion. Hence, he might get the fights, but first, the champion will have to defend his gold this weekend.

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