Israel Adesanya Wants to Showcase Grappling, “Choke Somebody Out”

The consensus seems to be that the weakest part of Israel Adesanya’s skill set is his ground game. After all, ‘The Last Stylebender’ has 80 kickboxing bouts on his resume and he’s widely regarded to be one of the best strikers in all of MMA.

But, clearly, the UFC’s middleweight champ is anxious to demonstrate that he’s also a threat with submissions.

Adesanya wants to “choke somebody out”

When Adesanya arrived in the UFC in 2018, he did so with considerable hype, on account of his run in kickboxing and because he was undefeated in MMA. Many have opined that wrestlers and talented grapplers could pose the biggest threat to Adesanya, due to his vaunted striking.

Well, to date, although Adesanya has defeated noted wrestlers like Derek Brunson and Yoel Romero, he hasn’t had to showcase his ground game much. But, while talking to MMA Fighting recently, Adesanya said this.

“I hope they start shooting on me more cause I want to choke somebody out,” Adesanya said. “I mean people were shooting on me at the beginning of my UFC career, and then they realized, ‘We can’t be doing that, f**k it let’s strike, oh we can’t do that [either].’”

“They should go back to shooting on me again, cause I’ve got some tricks that I want to use,” Adesanya said.

If you follow Adesanya, you know he’s extremely competitive and passionate about martial arts as a whole. So, his comments here shouldn’t come as a surprise.

It will be interesting to see if Adesanya’s ground game at work in the short term future. Especially if he ends up fighting light heavyweight champ, Jan Blachowicz next.

The latter doesn’t come from a wrestling background. But, Blachowicz is a black belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.

Training for the move up

Speaking of the Blachowicz bout, although it has yet to be finalized, the expectation is that the super-fight will get booked for early 2021. While talking about his preparation for the move up to 205, and if he’s going to be changing anything, Adesanya said this.

“Perfectly honest with you, nothing changes,” Adesanya said. “Just keep doing what we’ve always done, which is get better everyday.

There’s nothing that’s going to change in regards to that.”

“Same sh*t,” he said. “Go in there, establish my dominance, my range, my energy and pick them apart until they fall – or they get slept.”

It’s going to be fascinating to see how Adesanya competing at 205 plays out, if and when it happens.