The UFC 243 main event this October still does not have a venue, but it most certainly has a main event, with Robert Whittaker all set to defend his middleweight championship against interim champion Israel Adesanya. The two came face to face for the first time at the UFC Summer Press Conference 2019, and Adesanay came away from the encounter with an interesting, if not peculiar, takeaway (Transcript via MMA Junkie):
“At the staredown, he just reminded me of like a meth head,” Adesanya told MMA Junkie at the UFC Hall of Fame ceremony. “When you look into someone’s eyes and you’re just like, yeah, and I’m looking at him like OK, cool. He’s a guy, he’s been here, he’s tough, he’s a vet in this game, so I don’t have to try and get under his skin. He’s not under my skin, and he says he doesn’t think about me, and I don’t want him to. I don’t expect him to. My coaches think about him a lot, though, and we’re going to devise a beautiful strategy to take him off.”
What really matters though isn’t staredowns or the trash talk which began from Adesanya at the aforementioned press conference. What matters is the fight itself, which The Last Style Bender believes to be a fight of historic proportions:
“The biggest fight in the Oceania region,” Adesanya said. “Because before, in the same stadium we’re probably going to have at it, Ronda Rousey and Holly Holm, the upset. I was there, I felt it all the way in the nosebleeds, and you had to get outsiders to come headline, but now we have two people from our own backyard headlining the stadium. It’s beautiful.”
What’s your take on Israel Adesanya’s early trash talking directed at Robert Whittaker?
