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Israel Adesanya: Robert Whittaker isn't the only fighter who has evolved

Talking is, and long has been, a major part of the fight game. Israel Adesanya is good at it, better than most.

But the narrative of UFC 271 has largely been shaped by a guy who hates the limelight, who would rather be anonymous, who fights because he’s good at it and makes a lucrative living doing it but who can’t stand the attention it brings him.

Former middleweight champion Robert Whittaker has done a good job of defining his rematch for the title in the main event of UFC 271 on Saturday at the Toyota Center as a referendum on his ability to grow and mature.

Whittaker has said repeatedly that he wasn’t in the proper headspace when he fought Adesanya in Melbourne, Australia, at UFC 243 in 2019 and was stopped in the second round.

Adesanya is a master of social media, a guy who plays all the angles, and ordinarily, he’d fire back full bore.

But throughout his preparations for the rematch, he’s stayed largely quiet. Let people believe that Whittaker will be better, he thinks. Let them.

Because if the focus is on how much better Whittaker will be, they’ll ignore the fact that Adesanya himself figures to be vastly better on Saturday than he was at UFC 243.

“We all evolve and learn from our mistakes, I believe,” Adesanya told Yahoo Sports. “He’s a smart man. I believe would have learned from his mistakes, though there’s always that trap of falling back into old habits. But at the same time, what the f*** do you think I’ve been doing since 2019? I don’t sit here and twiddle my thumbs. I’ve evolved as well. I’ve made mistakes that I’ve learned from.”

And that, in a nutshell, is why Adesanya is so great. He’s got the flashy moves and the electric walkouts and few are better with a microphone than Adesanya.

But Adesanya, who is -300 at BetMGM to retain his title Saturday, reports to the gym every day hungrier than he was the day before. He’s never satisfied. No matter how decisively he wins his fights, or how many plaudits are hurled in his direction, he’s always looking to add to his game.

Whittaker has to be better, because he got stopped in the second round in 2019 and was nearly stopped at the end of the first round.

GLENDALE, ARIZONA - JUNE 12: Israel Adesanya of Nigeria reacts after his victory over Marvin Vettori of Italy in their UFC middleweight championship fight during the UFC 263 event at Gila River Arena on June 12, 2021 in Glendale, Arizona. (Photo by Jeff Bottari/Zuffa LLC)
Israel Adesanya reacts after his victory over Marvin Vettori in their UFC middleweight championship fight during UFC 263 at Gila River Arena on June 12, 2021 in Glendale, Arizona. (Photo by Jeff Bottari/Zuffa LLC) (Jeff Bottari via Getty Images)

Prior to his win over Marvin Vettori in June at UFC 263 in Phoenix, his coach, Eugene Bareman, told Yahoo Sports what he thought made Adesanya special.

“He’s never content and being good is never good enough,” Bareman said. “That’s a characteristic that all of the greats in sports have.”

His management company, Paradigm Sports, announced a lucrative extension with the UFC on Wednesday that it says will make him one of the highest-paid fighters in MMA.

Adesanya earned that lucrative extension by reaching for the stars. He still gets mocked for losing in what he calls his “side mission,” a bid a year ago to lift the light heavyweight title from then-champion Jan Blachowicz at UFC 259. It was his first loss in MMA after 20 consecutive wins.

Mocking him, though, ignores both what he’s done and the belief it takes to move up a division and win a title. After beating Whittaker and before losing to Blachowicz, Adesanya defeated Yoel Romero, the type of big, strong, burly wrestler critics said would be the death of him professionally, and Paulo Costa.

Costa entered that fight at UFC 253 with a 13-0 record that included 11 KOs and one win by submission.

Adesanya totally dominated Costa and, in the process, just about cleaned out the division.

There wasn’t much else for him to do, which is why he jumped up to 205 pounds to make a bid at that belt. After he lost, he handled it almost perfectly, vowing to get his house in order and come back better.

And sure enough, he fought Marvin Vettori at UFC 263 and ran the table, dominating one of the UFC’s hottest fighters.

He admitted that he’d gotten bored at times because he was so far ahead of the field. As he enters Saturday’s fight, he’s got victories over men ranked No. 1 (Whittaker), No. 2 (Vettori), No. 4 (Derek Brunson), No. 5 (Costa) and No. 10 (Kelvin Gastelum).

There is no chance, he insists, that he’ll be bored this time around. After he dropped Whittaker at the end of the first round in their first fight, he had a brief conversation with him. And that’s motivated him as he heads into the second with Whittaker telling anyone who will listen that he’s a new man.

Well, this proud champion is a new man, too.

“I put that pressure on myself to the point where I’m like, ‘I can’t lose to this guy,’” Adesanya said. “So it feels like a new fight to me. I know I’ve already beaten him, but similar to what I said to him in the first fight. He was looking at the screen at the end of the first round to see what had happened. I called over to him and said, ‘Hey, don’t worry about that. That’s in the past. Focus on me now.’ So yeah, I feel the same way.

“What happened [in 2019] is in the past. He’s a different fighter now, but guess what? So am I. I’m focused on right now and I’m focused on this weekend.”

Those are the words of a guy who never settles and who for darn sure isn’t going to let a soft-spoken opponent define the narrative of his title fight.