Former middleweight champion Michael Bisping watched the UFC 287 championship bout between Alex Pereira and Israel Adesanya and posted his reaction to YouTube.
Adesanya avenged his UFC 281 loss to Pereira by knocking out the Brazilian in the second round to recapture the 185-pound championship.
“Wow. Insane. Just insane,” said Bisping on his YouTube channel. “We know the history. Pereira had beaten him three times, stopped him twice. Well, that doesn’t matter because Israel Adesanya put a stamp on that, put a nail in the coffin, put him to bed, knocked him out, put him to sleep, sent him to the shadow realm. Whatever you want to call it. Israel Adesanya just closed the book.”
Most impressive to Bisping was the fact that Adesanya took the fight in the first place. After losing three times to Pereira, he called for an immediate rematch.
“The insane pressure that Izzy must have felt coming into this one. Let’s be honest,” said Bisping. “The guy had beaten him three times, stopped him twice. That is a big, big mental hurdle to overcome.”
“What a shot. What a performance. What a comeback,” Bisping continued. “All respect to Israel Adesanya because he went out there and he did it in absolute style.”
Adesanya took the fight like a real man
“He deserves so much respect for taking that fight again. When someone has beaten you three times, stopped you twice there’s a lot of psychological damage. There are a lot of skeletons in that closet, but Izzy didn’t care. He took the fight like a real man,” said Bisping. “A man that believes in himself. A man that believes the he’s better.”
Adesanya’s knockout of Pereira left Bisping in an excited frenzy. He heaped praises on Adesanya in nearly disbelief at what “The Last Stylebender’ did on Saturday.
“He closed the book. He closed the book. And new. Israel Adesanya is back,’ said Bisping. “It was sensational. It was mind blowing. It really was. The pressure. The pressure that man must have felt to go out there, to do that, deliver that kind of knockout over someone the size of Pereira, as skilled as Pereira.”
“To step up to the plate and do that. Just phenomenal,” he said.
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Michael Bisping reacts to Israel Adesanya knocking out Alex Pereira