After five regular, largely flawless rounds against Cannonier, Adesanya admitted he had an “off-night” at T-Mobile Arena. The champion’s trainer, Eugene Bareman, said those closest to him could tell he was not in top form. “And still, I still wake him up,” Adesanya said. “It was in the match, maybe when I couldn’t find my hard shots, my kicks. … He adjusted well. It wasn’t just me against him. It was him against my team.” Just as important as the belt was for Adesanya and the opportunity to beat Cannonier’s chosen opponent was a matchup of their coaches, Bareman and Cannonier led by John Crouch. It was, he said, “a battle of the game plans.” Ultimately, the Las Vegas crowd didn’t like the game plan – or what happened when it went south. Adesanya, however, had no time for his haters. Just as he fended off air traffic competing with his microphone at the press conference, he said that people who didn’t like his performance, politely, weren’t important. “Pull them,” he said. “They’ve been here since 3 in the afternoon, they’re all drunk, they don’t know what real fighting is. I’ve said it, the big guys, they all get to that point.” Adesanya has a point there. Previously dominant champions like Georges St-Pierre and Anderson Silva, his predecessor, reached the point where many of their title defenses were not as competitive. The less competitive they became, the louder the accusations that they were racing safe, fighting for points or just plain boring. Adesanya sat in the cheap seats before taking over the UFC and knows this cycle. “GSP, people are going to boo him, and I’m like, ‘What the hell are you watching?’ You are a dumb f****. [Muhammad] Ali, Floyd Mayweather, same thing. You get to that point where, like, you’re so great, people just want to see you fall. They just want to see you fall, no matter what. If it’s not like a show-out, spectacular show, then it’s like, ah, he’s not even that good. “But trust me, Jared knows I’m a good fighter. He knows I’m a great fighter and I gave him the same credit as well.” There will be another opportunity for Adesanya to showcase his greatness when he attempts to avenge a pair of kickboxing losses – one by brutal knockout – to Alex Pereira, who knocked out Sean Strickland in the UFC 276 main card. Strickland, the UFC 276 presser’s unofficial comedy hero, might have stolen the initiative from Pereira with a win. Instead, it ended in a scroll and Adesanya refocused on the man who defeated him. “That’s the next fight,” Adesanya said. “I saw his fight. It was a good fight, but Sean Strickland should have focused on his job, as I told him. How soon [will I fight him]we will find out. “I’m up against a guy who has beaten me in kickboxing, and now, he’s still after me, because he knows I’m the king and he wants to try to take it away from me. You see what happens when my back is against the wall.”
