UFC champion Israel Adesanya reveals he suffered serious injury two weeks before KO win

Adesanya suffered a Grade 1 MCL tear 13 days before regaining the middleweight title from Alex Pereira

Israel Adesanya has revealed that he suffered a serious knee injury two weeks before regaining the UFC middleweight title.

Adesanya knocked out Alex Pereira in the second round at UFC 287 on 9 April, winning back the belt that he lost to the Brazilian via TKO in November.

Adesanya’s win over Pereira was his first in four attempts, with the latter having beaten the Nigerian-New Zealander twice in kickboxing before their MMA meeting five months ago. And Adesanya looked set for more misery against Pereira when, 13 days before UFC 287, he suffered a Grade 1 MCL tear.

Adesanya, 33, revealed the injury on his YouTube channel on Wednesday (26 April), and said: “I’ve been here before. My UFC debut, three weeks out, I did my right ankle.

“I remember the next day, or that night, calling [my physiotherapist] and being like, ‘Yo, I need to see you tomorrow, ASAP.’ He had to, like, re-injure it or cause pain to it. I don’t know, it’s f***ing magic or whatever, but I remember biting on a towel and sitting there in pain, screaming as he’s f***ing massaging my hurt ankle where it’s not supposed to be massaged. So, that’s one.

“[Then with the Derek] Brunson fight, I hurt my knee three weeks beforehand. I remember [my dad] saying, ‘Take five days off and just do nothing.’ It was really bad. I took five days off [...] three weeks before the biggest fight of my life at [Madison Square Garden].

“It’s all part of the story. This is meant to happen. No one wants anything like this to happen, but if you can’t change your circumstances, change your perspective. So, I was like, ‘This has happened. This is my perspective. This was meant to happen. I’ll overcome this.’

“So, the comeback of getting from then to the cage was already a big win for me, because after doing that – because that was really f***ing bad – I was like, ‘If I can get through that and get to the cage, this fight, I can get through it.’

“I was like, they can’t break me.”

Israel Adesanya (left) knocked out Alex Pereira in stunning fashion this month (Getty Images)

Adesanya also shared footage of the moment in which he suffered his most recent injury, revealing that it occurred during a grappling exchange in sparring.

The middleweight champion is next expected to fight the winner of Robert Whittaker vs Dricus Du Plessis, which is scheduled for July.

Adesanya took the middleweight title from Whittaker with a TKO win in 2019, before retaining the gold against the Australian on points last year.

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