Israel Adesanya had an incredible vision for his UFC career and decided not to traing with Daniel Cormier
Daniel Cormier is one of the greatest MMA fighters of all-time and was speaking to the media before UFC 259.
Cormier has won belts in two UFC divisions and taken on almost all the top men in his division during his time.
However, one fight that didn’t go his way was against Jon Jones. This was at UFC 182 and Jones also handed DC’s first loss in MMA in 2015.
DC was asked about Israel Adesanya and a journalist brought up an interesting story. The journalist claimed that DC had trained with Adesanya but the retired UFC star wanted to correct him:
“No, I asked him to train. I sent him a message.
“Rashad Evans put Adesanya and I to contact when I was going to fight Jones, before Izzy was the man.
“Rashad is a very smart guy, he said, ‘There is a kid named the Last Stylebender not in the UFC yet. You should reach out to him and see if he will give you some sparring.”
Israel Adesanya backed out of training with Daniel Cormier for a great reason
Adesanya came into the UFC undefeated but had a lot of belief in his skills. Cormier went on to explain why Adesanya didn’t want to train with him and it had to do with UFC gold:
“Initially I reached out to the guy, we started going messaging and although not even in the UFC yet, it maybe his first fight, he didn’t come though because he anticipated at some point fighting Luke Rockhold.
“He had the forethought to not put himself in the situation where Luke would have eyes on him every single day.
“I needed him but he had forethought, ‘you know what? Down the line I am going to be in the championship picture and I may see Luke Rockhold. So it is not best for me to go’.
“Which is crazy because you are a champion asking a kid to come and train and he was like ‘I am going to be the champion one day, I don’t want to give away my secrets.’”
Rockhold is a former UFC Middleweight champion and considered as one of the best of his time.
While Adesanya never fought Rockhold he did go on to become the Middleweight champion. His vision certainly helped him a lot as not many have been able to get the better of the Last Stylebender.
Adesanya has also defeated legends such as Anderson Silva and Robert Whittaker. He is 20-0 in his MMA career and is now aiming to win the Light Heavyweight title from Jan Blachowicz at UFC 259.
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