Dana White: Adesanya is done with division jumping

Israel Adesanya had the grandest plans in the history of modern MMA. After winning the interim championship, unifying it, and successfully defending it twice, he moved up 20 pounds to challenge light heavyweight champion Jan Blachowicz at UFC 259 on Saturday night.

“Prince of Poland” won the belt after it was vacated by Jon Jones, who has moved up to heavyweight and will challenge the winner of current champion Stipe Miocic vs. Francis Ngannou. Adesanya believes Jones will win, and planned to challenge for the heavyweight title as well. However, Adesanya lost a unanimous decision vs. Blachowicz, who commented post-fight that he thought “The Last Stylebender” would be faster than he was, and added that he was surprised too that Adesanya hit as hard as he did.

At the post-fight media conference, UFC president Dana White put a fork in Adesanya’s grand plan, at least for the foreseeable future.

Listen, he’s the middleweight champion. He doesn’t get the light heavyweight title, he doesn’t get Jon Jones, said White. But you know what, you never hurt somebody for trying to be big and trying to become great. He gave it a shot tonight, and it didn’t happen. And Jan is the man. He is the 205-pound champ, and now he starts taking on all comers in the division.

Size is always a factor when you move up a weight class in this sport. The double champ thing, it’s like the thing to do right now, but it isn’t easy to do. The people who have done it are absolutely, positively special.

Jon Jones used to be at that weight class. Jon’s going to be so much bigger than Israel. I think Israel should focus on middleweight right now. Get back in there and keep doing what he does in the middleweight division.

Adesanya agreed with White that he’s headed back to middleweight, at least for now.

You’ll see me back at 205 later in the future, but right now I’ve got a division I’ve got to dominate, said Adesanya. I know they’re probably thinking, ‘Oh, that’s it. He just got taken down.’ All right, cool. But I’ll remind them again why I’m the king at 185.

So who’s next? The next challenger will likely be vs. the winner of Darren Till vs. Marvin Vettori fight on April 10 or the winner of Robert Whittaker vs. Paulo Costa on April 17. Adesanya said he’s ready for whoever looks best, but has a first choice.

I’ve already stated I would like to fight Till if he can get it done, said Adesanya. But who is the most deserving? We’ll have to wait and see. Show me something. I know they all think, ‘That’s it. We’ve seen the chink in his armor now.’ But I’ll tell you one thing: Every time in my life that I’ve lost in combat sports, I come back and I f*** the next guy up. I knock them out, because guess what? My team and I, we actually go back and do the work.