“Before this fight, I was thinking, ‘My career is on the decline, so I want to do as many fights as I can because when I’m done, I’m going to miss it,'” the 34-year-old Nigerian said on another edition of The Rock podcast. “I tried to fight as often as I could. Four fights in fourteen months, and it’s not just fights, it’s training and everything else. I had an injury before the Alex Pereira fight, you saw that. I’m not making excuses. Strickland beat me that night because he was the better fighter. He did a good job and he had a great team behind him.”
“Now it’s going to take me a while to get myself busy and I won’t be fighting for a long time. I’m not retiring because I know myself – I can’t leave like this. But if it happens, I’ll be fine. I don’t have to prove anything else. I know what I’m capable of and what I can change in my life so that my body will adapt and heal. So, you won’t see me fighting for a long time yet.”
On September 9 at UFC 293 in Sydney, Israel Adesanya sensationally lost to American Sean Strickland, who defeated the Nigerian by a 49-46 three-round unanimous decision to become the division’s new champion.