Israel Adesanya Breaks Down His Performance Against Anderson Silva

Israel Adesanya is coming off of the biggest win of his career so far, beating Anderson Silva at UFC 234. And from the sound of it, the unbeaten UFC middleweight has enjoyed watching it back, as much as he enjoyed the actual fight itself. As he told Luke Thomas on The MMA Hour.

“I want to watch it again and again and again. I’ll probably watch it more than the rest of my fights in the UFC after the fight. But yeah huge for me. I really just want to watch the fight. Every time I’ve watched it, I’ve watched the fight twice now, every time I’ve watched it I’ve taken something away from it. Myself, Silva and just the whole spectacle itself.

“It’s still cool. Still very cool. Still kind of surreal a little bit. Because I was watching it myself, there’s certain moments that just, for me they’re like special moments for me because they were sh*t that I kind of like, I already knew and I’ve seen before happen many times with other fighters, Silva’s opponents, and I never fell victim to.

“I wasn’t sure about the second round at first, because the second round, his only success in that fight was in the second round when he hit me, it was like two jabs in a row. So he jabbed me, and I was like oh s***, and even before I could even, like, ‘f***’, he just jabbed me and then boom, another one just hit me and I was like ‘f***’ and then I was blind in one eye and I was on the fence, and he knew it, and he was trying to close in.

“The way how I handled that, that was really cool for me. A lot of people we just, their mind just plays tricks on them and then they’re like ‘oh, fuck’ and then they turn their back and then he f***s them up. That was the only problem that I had mostly in that fight.

“He’s never fought a striker like me. He’s never fought a guy like me. Everyone else he’s fought just stands there and looks stupid. So I was able to get my footwork right, I was able to get my timing right, I was able to outmanoeuvre him, able to be a step ahead, there were situations, there were certain strikes where literally just [whosh] but it was cool to see in real time they looked like they were hitting, but they were just whizzing past. And he was, he’s still, man he’s quick.

“[The fight was] competitive to the point that he brought it, yes, but not competitive to the point that he was matching me. One time he was able to match me was in the second round, and that was because he landed a nice jab, you know? Good on him. Credit to him. He landed that nice jab, and he flipped it, it was well-timed, and the second follow up jab was well timed, and he was like oh s*** I gotta get this guy now. So it was time to put that pressure on him, put the sauce on. And he brought that energy, I felt that energy and I was like man, this is how people wilt under him, they don’t know what to do.”

“Even when the way he was putting his hands down it was kind of like it was expecting me to throw. It was so tempting. I was like ‘this is how guys get caught’ against Anderson when he puts his hands down and says ‘get my face,’ and I was so tempted, but I was like ‘nah f*** you.’ The second time he did it in the third round, I was like stop doing that, I was like man if I was thinking about if I land something on you, you’re f***ing going to sleep.”

“Silva is a big, big name worldwide, and this is the first time he’s actually fought outside of North America and Brazil in a long time, or ever. So, for people who are big fans of MMA, a lot of them are big fans because of Silva and yeah, it’s worldwide and he affected people worldwide and he had big support over here.”

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