MMA
How Israel Adesanya and his camp explained his performance against Sean Strickland at UFC 293
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Israel Adesanya held up Sean Strickland's hand in victory moments after losing the middleweight title to the American at UFC 293Â on Sunday.
"The Last Stylebender" didn't stick around in the Octagon to explain his lackluster performance, but did offer some quick comments during the post-event press conference, before making a speedy exit from there, too.Â
"I had a different plan for this. But again, life throws curveballs at you," Adesanya said inside the Qudos Bank Arena in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
"Win or lose, I wasn't going to say much anyway but right now I lost tonight to the better man on the night."
That's when Adesanya made a quick departure and left the press conference podium to his coach Eugene Bareman to field questions and explain his atypical performance.
"There was an alternate kind of universe where Israel performs his poorest or poorly, where Sean could win, and I'm sitting in that universe right now," Bareman told reporters.
"So, [Adesanya] had an off-night.Â
"Training camp was great, I'm not going to make any excuses. Leading up to the fight, fight week was great, sparring partners, all the technical little things to do with the camp — they were all perfect. There's no excuses there."
Bareman added: "He came in, he had an off-night. He couldn't see the same things we were seeing. We couldn't make a good connection in the corner. It was just a frustrating night. But why was it a frustrating night? It was a frustrating night because of the opponent. Don't take nothing away from the opponent."
That being said, Bareman spoke about having a rematch as soon as possible, adding that although a rematch fight camp is difficult to prepare for that he's confident his charge can make the necessary tweaks to regain the middleweight world title.
"I don't think we have to change too much, but we will find something because we have the benefit of time," Bareman said. "We'll find something to add to this camp and we'll win the rematch."
In speaking at the post-event press conference earlier, UFC president Dana White also expressed a desire to have a rematch between Strickland and Adesanya.
