Israel Adesanya has laid out of his exact terms for a third UFC meeting with his long-time kickboxing rival Alex Pereira after knocking the Brazilian out earlier this year.
Adesanya and Pereira have an historic rivalry that dates back to two kickboxing matches before their respective MMA careers, and they have eached stopped each other in the UFC's octagon. But after the New Zealand fighter won their rematch earlier this year, calls for the trilogy have been weirdly muted within the company.
Boss Dana White has already begun to push for different challenges, while Pereira has confirmed that he has no interest in fighting again at middleweight after a number of gruelling cuts to make 185lb. But Adesanya would be willing to do it, assuming a few key conditions were met.
"If he wins the belt at 205, I'll do it again," Adesanya told Ariel Helwani during an appearance on The MMA Hour earlier this week. "But if not, I think he's done with it, I'm done with it. It's like everybody else wants to see it, but we're both done with it, that's life. I met him at the airport, it was f***ing video game s***.
Pereira will face former world champion Jan Blachowicz in his first fight at the new weight in an effort to earn a shot at champion Jamahal Hill. The pair are the only two men to hand Adesanya MMA losses, but the middleweight king believes that Pereira may win by knockout.
"I think [Alex] might knock [Jan] out," Adesanya added, before noting that during a recent meeting while boarding a flight that the pair had discussed the bout. "He might, so we talked about it at the airport. Y'all got to realise not to believe the internet, things happen. Jeff [Adesanya's videographer] was not there so he wasn't able to capture it.
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"But afterwards, when we go through the security thing I was like 'Jan?' There was a limited language barrier but we talked for about maybe a good two minutes or so and I gave him some advice on how to handle Jan and we had the same idea, like he's going to knock him out.
"I was just like 'woah, be careful, because he knows your striking is really good so he's going to be patient with you like he was with me'. What we expected him to do he didn't do because of great striking so he had the same idea. I feel like if Jan doesn't take him done, [Alex] is gonna knock him out.
"If he wins the 205lb belt maybe [we do the trilogy], but if I want to bet money on it? No. Because I've been there at 205lb and it's hard, it's not an easy task but if he wins the 205lb belt and they might give him a fast track like they did with me, then they're going to have a magic crazy f***ing epic fight at 205lb with me and him and that'll be us for the fifth time, isn't that wild?"
