Israel Adesanya has been popping up in some surprising places for training lately, and “The Last Stylebender” has teased his next move while sparring with other former champions.
Just this week, footage has come out showing Izzy training at Sean O’Malley’s gym in Glendale, Arizona. He’s also been down at Kill Cliff in Florida training with Kamaru Usman. But it’s back up in Arizona where O’Malley coach Tim Welsh says “Stylebender” shared some updates on his future fighting plans.
“The thing with Izzy, he was saying he’s kind of enjoying his life,” Welsh said on his YouTube channel. “Before, he was taking all these back-to-back fights. If you look at the old pay-per-views, every other pay-per-view he was the headliner, and he’s taking some breaks. It seems like he’s in a really good head space.”
As for what’s next for Adesanya? The former middleweight champion is on a three fight losing skid, and Welsh pointed to the first of these losses as Izzy’s next fight.
“It seemed like he was wanting that Strickland fight back,” Welsh said. “They said, and it’s not excuses, but his knee was very f—ed up, he was so burnt out, it was just a bad, bad night where he didn’t show up.”
Don’t expect Adesanya to show back up until he’s really feeling the desire to fight, though.
“He said GSP have him good advice,” Welsh recalled. “He said ‘Don’t just take these fights, make sure you’re hungry to take a fight. Especially when you’re at this level and you have enough money. Make sure you’re hungry and you want to do it.’”
With Adesanya popping into camps around the world to train, it seems like that hunger could be building.
