Chael Sonnen thinks Israel Adesanya is amazing. After the UFC 287 fight, Chael believes that Adesanya is the best middleweight fighter in UFC history. He made this statement recently on The MMA Hour – “I believe that he is.”
At UFC 287, Adesanya, 33 years old, won back his middleweight championship by defeating Alex Pereira. This was a big deal to him since he had lost to him three times previously in both kickboxing and MMA matches. Adesanya is now one of the few people to have double titles in the same weight class while also having an impressive 13-1 record! During his first stint as champion, he successfully defended it five times in a row.
The main person that Adesanya has to compete with in the middleweight ranks is Anderson Silva. From when he first joined the UFC in June 2006 until 2013, “The Spider” had a perfect record with 16 wins and no losses. He also earned a lot of successes in two different divisions. As for title defenses – the number ten remains as his biggest accomplishment (second greatest in UFC history). This was even better than Demetrious Johnson who successfully defended his UFC flyweight belt from 2012-17 but only managed eleven times total.
Two of Silva’s most famous matches were against Sonnen and together they made an epic rivalry that many won’t forget.
But even with all the history between them, Sonnen still ranks Adesanya higher than Silva in a historical perspective because in 2019 they faced off; Adesanya (29 yrs old) beat Silva (43 yrs old) through a unanimous decision at UFC 234.
It’s tough for me when two people fight, because then people start to try and justify the loser. They say things like “well, maybe they weren’t at their best” which I think is strange.
We always have to show respect to our opponents. We might think one person is better than the other, but what really matters is the head-to-head matchup between them. For example, if Adesanya and Pereira are fighting each other, even though Adesanya performed better in their earlier fights, Pereira did beat him three times in a row. That’s why their individual performances have to be taken into account when deciding who’s better. In the end though, Adesanya won against Silva.
Sonnen tried to explain why Adesanya was in a difficult position when he faced Silva, whom Adesanya had admired since he was young. Sonnen said, “It’s really tough for Adesanya because he’s fighting his own hero. He was just sixteen years old and living in New Zealand when I fought Anderson Silva and all he did then was tweet.”
I had noticed that someone on Twitter wasn’t in favor of me and they didn’t like the competition I was fighting. We were both sixteen years old and now, many years later, we were standing face to face. He was my idol; a poster of him was even on my wall! Both of us had obstacles to deal with during the fight: Father Time was against Anderson while there were other factors against Izzy as well. In the end, we fought head-to-head and Will won.
Sonnen said, “I think you have to accept that without making any excuses. Anderson Silva wouldn’t excuse himself by saying it wasn’t fair – he would just accept that the other person won.”
