Israel Adesanya admits UFC 287 is his \u2018last chance\u2019 to banish the demons and exact revenge over old rival Alex Pereira.<\/p>\n
The Brazilian beat Adesanya \u2013 having already done so twice in kickboxing \u2013 when the pair renewed their acquaintance for the UFC middleweight title last year.<\/span><\/p>\n Miami plays host to the rematch next Saturday and Adesanya, who had looked supreme as champion is now enjoying being the hunter rather than hunted.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m hunting, and I mean that in every sense of the word,\u201d Adesanya said on his YouTube channel.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThe mindset is different, definitely. Even (coach) Eugene (Bareman) and I are on the same page. The mindset is definitely different.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI like it because it puts it all on me, and it\u2019s kind of poetic in a way. One life: Roll the dice.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThis is my last shot, and I\u2019m going to give it all I\u2019ve got in every sense of the word.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Pereira was losing on the scorecards in their last battle until the fifth round, when the powerful Brazilian upped the aggression and forced a stoppage.<\/span><\/p>\n Adesanya had never lost at middleweight before that night and having performed so well, will only make minor tweaks to the gameplan this time.<\/span><\/p>\n His coach Eugene Bareman told It\u2019s Time For Sports: \u2018One of the hardest things in the sport is to fight someone like Pereira. People like him don\u2019t really exist.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cIn your fighting career, you will fight one or two guys like that. One George Foreman, one Mike Tyson.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cIf you\u2019re lucky you\u2019ll fight one of them. It is one of the hardest things to do in the sport because even though you see many clear paths to victory, they have a special gift. And that special gift is powerful.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThe ability to take you out with one shot has to be respected and is a superpower that not everybody has.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cSo I understand the magnitude of what we\u2019re trying to do and we\u2019re up for the challenge.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Israel Adesanya admits UFC 287 is his \u2018last chance\u2019 to banish the demons and exact revenge over old rival Alex Pereira.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13037,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[6779,6777,6778],"class_list":["post-13036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-alex-pereira","tag-israel-adesanya","tag-ufc-287"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13036"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13036"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13036\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13038,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13036\/revisions\/13038"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13037"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}