Israel Adesanya has signed a bout agreement for his next UFC fight, and he says the four-fight losing streak hanging over him is about to end. Yahoo Sports reported the signing Wednesday, Oct. 28. The reports so far don’t name an opponent, an event or a date. What’s on record is the contract and Adesanya’s insistence that the slide stops with this fight.
That’s a heavy promise from a former two-time middleweight champion who hasn’t had his hand raised in four straight trips to the Octagon. The skid has cost him ground in the rankings. In MMA Mania’s updated UFC Meta Rankings after UFC 333, Adesanya fell one spot to No. 10 at 185 pounds. Abus Magomedov jumped four places to No. 9 and passed him. Sean Strickland holds the middleweight belt. Khamzat Chimaev, Dricus Du Plessis, Nassourdine Imavov and Brendan Allen fill out the top four, so the climb back is steep.
Still Talking About Pereira
The signing news landed a few days after Adesanya spent airtime on somebody else’s career. In a conversation with Demetrious Johnson, he went after old rival Alex Pereira for saying he’d return to light heavyweight if he loses to Sergei Pavlovich at UFC 335 on Dec. 12 at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. Pereira made that comment on Connect Cast ahead of his second heavyweight fight.
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Adesanya hated hearing it. “I don’t like that. I don’t like the fact he’s putting that out there,” he told Johnson, according to MMA Fighting. His advice was blunt: “Go back to Chama.” He called the rest of the talk “fugazi.” He also asked why Pereira didn’t simply stay at 205 after his fight with Ciryl Gane.
These two have a long history. Pereira beat Adesanya twice in kickboxing, then stopped him in the fifth round of the UFC 281 main event in November 2022. Five months later at UFC 287, in April 2023, Adesanya knocked Pereira out cold. MMA Fighting named it Knockout of the Year. They’ve since become friendly, which explains why Adesanya sounded more like a worried training partner than a rival.
There’s an irony here that’s hard to miss. The advice Adesanya gave Pereira, to get back to the mindset that made him scary and stop hedging, is the same advice anyone in his camp would give him right now. Pereira’s problem, as Adesanya sees it, is planning for a loss out loud. Adesanya went the other way. He signed the paper and said publicly that he’s winning.
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Quick Take
I like the bravado. A guy four losses deep could easily take a quiet tune-up and say nothing, and Adesanya is putting his name on a result before anyone knows who’s standing across from him. But the opponent is the whole story, and we don’t have it yet. If the UFC hands him a top-five middleweight, the promise gets real teeth. If they find him someone in the low teens, a win buys him breathing room and not much else. Either way, the man who just told Pereira to stop flirting with losing has tied his own name to a win. Now he has to go out and get one.