Eagle-eyed Alex Pereira spots Israel Adesanya injury, draws partial confession from ‘Stylebender’ — ‘This guys knows me’

It’s safe to say Alex Pereira and Israel Adesanya know one another’s fighting styles intimately.

The duo have competed four times now, twice in kickboxing and twice inside the Octagon. Famously, the first kickboxing match was a controversial decision in favor of the Brazilian, while Pereira was losing the second until a late comeback win via — you guessed it — left hook KO. In the cage, Pereira dethroned Adesanya in 2022, but Adesanya scored revenge with his own thrilling knockout last year (watch here). All told, the duo have spent about 40 minutes actively trying to destroy one another, let alone all their fight specific preparation for their rivalry.

That experience gives “Poatan” better perspective than most to analyze Adesanya’s fights, and he believes that Adesanya showed up to his UFC 305 title clash versus Dricus Du Plessis injured.

“I don’t know how Adesanya was,” Pereira said on his YouTube channel. “When we are there, we don’t talk about injuries, don’t talk about problems. We are there, we want to fight, want to win. Maybe Adesanya had an injury, I don’t know. You could see he kicked very little … that inside kick of Adesanya is very good. Not everyone can do it, but he can do it very well. It was a good weapon, and he didn’t continue doing that inside kick.

“Even Dricus said it bothered him, also bothered me … he didn’t continue to do it. When he is only throwing hands, I think it is easier for the opponent to protect themselves or to get out. It was more boxing there.”

The clip made rounds on social media, and Adesanya responded. While Adesanya didn’t directly admit to an injury or specify why he wasn’t kicking as much as usual, he didn’t deny the accusation. Instead, he simply confirmed the Pereira knew him and his fighting style extremely well, which feels like a confession that something was less than 100% on fight night.

“It’s weird how this guy knows me,” Adesanya wrote on X. “It’s like we’ve spent hours studying each other’s moves and fought multiple times or sumn’. I mean that.”

At 35 years of age and well over 100 professional bouts into his combat sports career, it shouldn’t be a surprise that Adesanya likely came into UFC 305 injured. That’s fairly standard practice at the highest level; everybody has some kind of nagging injury. In the words of Dustin Poirier, “You gotta hush it up” though, because nobody wants to hear excuses.

Adesanya doesn’t seem to have any plans for a full confession, which is why it’s helpful for us to have the analysis of “Poatan” to reveal such information.