Michael Bisping faced Israel Adesanya with a harsh reality check after UFC Fight Night 250.
Adesanya (24-5 MMA, 13-5 UFC) suffered his third-straight loss when he was knocked out by Nassourdine Imavov (16-4 MMA, 8-2 UFC) in Saturday’s main event at ANB Arena in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Having now lost four of his past five, former UFC middleweight champion Adesanya finds himself in an unfamiliar place.
“The biggest takeaway is that it’s over,” Bisping told ESPN on the UFC Saudi Arabia post-fight show (h/t MMA Fighting). “Israel Adesanya’s reign as champion, I don’t think will come again. I say that with the greatest of respect, and I truly mean that. (He is) an original, an incredible fighter, a legend of the sport, a future Hall of Famer. But his time at the top is done.”
While Adesanya looked good in his losses to UFC middleweight champion Dricus Du Plessis and Imavov, Bisping explained how the milage on his body is starting to wear on him.
“A long career at the highest level has a lot of wear and tear on the body, and not just the fights,” Bisping said. “The training camps – the training camps are worse than the fights. A fight is won and you might go out there – we’ve seen Israel Adesanya just destroy people, use the leg kicks, just pimp them, beat them easily – but that doesn’t happen in the training camp. Otherwise, you don’t improve. You get worse. You build bad habits.
“You need to be getting pushed and get people taking you down, wrestling you, ground and pounding you, choking you out. You’re tweaking ankles and legs. You’re taking punches on the chin. When you do this at the highest level, and you train accordingly, that’s what takes its toll on the body. Yes, he’s taking some lumps and bumps inside the octagon, and he took one (against Imavov). But that combined with the years and years of training to get to this level, that’s the problem. That’s the issue.”
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This article originally appeared on MMA Junkie: Michael Bisping: Israel Adesanya’s ‘time at the top is done’ after UFC Fight Night 250 loss
