UFC newcomer Israel Adesanya warns everyone: 'If you want to beat me, better do it yesterday'

Israel Adesanya entered the octagon last Saturday carrying a lot of hype but also a few questions. The main one arguably: Could the exciting striker hold his own on MMA’s biggest stage?

Adesanya (12-0 MMA, 1-0 UFC) answered that quite assertively. First, he turned Rob Wilkinson (11-2 MMA, 0-2 UFC) into the 12th knockout victim of his 12-fight MMA record. And then the 28-year-old, who’d later bag an added $50,000 for his “Performance of the Night” efforts, made sure his post-fight was just as intriguing.

With that answer, though, comes yet another question: What now?

As it often happens when promising fighters make flashy debuts, especially those who excel at specific areas of the game, there’s a balance to be struck there. What kind of competition should the UFC give a fighter who clearly has star potential?

We’ll find out how the promotion feels about that when they announce his next matchup. But Adesanya has an easy answer in regard to the type of fights he wants to pursue.

“I’ll fight anyone, anyone in the world,” Adesanya told MMAjunkie a few days after the middleweight bout, which aired live on FS1 from Perth Arena in Perth, Western Australia. “I’ve never really had my fights cherry-picked. A lot of these guys will get into the UFC or even combat sports, like boxing or kickboxing, they get their fights cherry-picked. Not me. All my fights were fighting the best people from different parts of the planet.

“Now I’m in the UFC, people are like, ‘Feed him some cans first or get him a top 10.’ I don’t really care. Either one is a fight for me. Whomever I fight, my pay check is still the same. And I’m getting bonuses in all the rest of my fights.”

Adesanya’s biggest strength is no secret to anyone. The Nigerian-born fighter, who fights out of New Zealand, holds an extensive kickboxing record, which he estimates sits at 79 fights, and a handful of boxing bouts. The numbers are solid, but it’s the visual evidence that really makes a compelling case for the human highlight reel.

As Wilkinson – and his 16 takedown attempts – showed, a lot of Adesanya’s competition will most likely prefer to test his blue-belt Brazilian jiu-jitsu than his hands and knees. But, as Saturday’s bout also helped illustrate, Adesanya is not too worried about that.

“Everyone just thinks they want to take me down,” Adesanya said. “I welcome it. For me, I wanted to showcase my stand-up in the last fight just to make my debut – put a stamp on it, get those 50 (grand). But I welcome someone to try to take me down and keep me down. Or to see what I’m like on my back, see what I’m like on top. This is not just stand-up fighting.”

Had he wanted to stick to what’s comfortable, Adesanya said, he could have easily just kept on his highly victorious kickboxing and boxing path. Instead, he chose to incorporate a whole new set of skills to his game – and test himself against some people who have been doing it for a long time on the biggest stages.

Why, you ask?

“For me, in the back of my mind, I don’t know if it’s my ego or just me being anxious,” Adesanya said. “I just felt if I ever run up on a guy with a jiu-jitsu black belt or a really good wrestler, he’d be able to (expletive) me up without even throwing a single punch. I can’t, as a man, I can’t live with that. Feeling vulnerable. Like someone might have an advantage in another area, in the ground or against the fence.”

And then, of course, there’s the challenge of learning.

“This is martial arts. You have to evolve and keep learning,” Adesanya said. “And, man, you jump to MMA, there’s so much to learn. There’s what you know, there’s what you don’t know and there’s what you don’t know you don’t know, which is infinite. That’s why you want to keep learning.”

The learning process is the reason Adesanya doesn’t see his UFC debut as an overdue occurrence. While a previous contract with a different organization kept him from getting signed sooner, Adesanya said he’s glad for the extra time he got to compete across the globe and meet fighters of different styles.

We got a preview of how that paid off at UFC 221. But Adesanya is nowhere near done showing what he can do.

“No one’s really calling me out or saying anything yet,” Adesanya said. “I know these boys, they’re just treating me like the Dark Lord – he who shall not be named. They feel like if they say my name, they might get the power. Or maybe they’re scared. I don’t really care.

“All I know is I’m working. If you want to beat me, you better do it yesterday, because every (expletive) day, I’m getting better.”

Adesanya’s exciting style inside the cage would certainly have been enough to capture some attention. But add to it his confident personality – and, of course, now a stylish UFC debut – and you can understand why the MMA community would be abuzz with the idea, however embryonic, of its possible next superstar.

For some fighters coming up, that is a label too heavy to carry. But, probably because he had no doubt it would happen eventually, that’s not the case with Adesanya.

“I’ve been there for a long time, you guys are just late to the party,” Adesanya said.

For complete coverage of UFC 221, visit the UFC events section of the site.