Breaking! Israel Adesanya issues first statement on upset loss To Strickland
Israel Adesanya has won eight UFC title fights, and was the massive favorite heading into UFC 293, but Sean Strickland pulled a rabbit out of the hat and scored a massive upset.
Strickland pressured well and outboxed Adesanya by the fence, winning a pretty wide decision to become the new UFC champion. It was a huge upset that left a lot of fighters watching, and even Strickland himself speechless.
Perhaps the now former champion was as well. After the shocking upset loss, Adesanya didn’t have a post-fight interview in the cage. He also decided not to speak much with the media at the UFC 293 post-fight press conference.
Israel Adesanya issues brief statement on loss to Sean Strickland
Adesanya didn’t stay long at the press conference at all, only issuing a very brief statement.
“Pause. I had a different plan for this, but life throws curved balls at you,” Adesanya said. “Win or lose, I wasn’t going to say much anyway. But right now, I lost tonight to the better man on the night.
I just want to be with the people that care about me, my team, and they’re waiting for me, so I’m going to do that,” he said.
Afterwards, Adesanya quickly left and just handed it over to his coach Eugene Bareman.
“This is our team. This is how we do it. He wants to be protected, that’s our job to protect him,” Bareman said about stepping in to speak to the media on Adesanya’s behalf. “He is in a time of need right now.”
