{"id":1319,"date":"2023-06-09T22:37:48","date_gmt":"2023-06-09T21:37:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mmamag.ma\/en\/?p=1319"},"modified":"2023-06-10T13:51:28","modified_gmt":"2023-06-10T12:51:28","slug":"israel-adesanya-talks-about-an-old-sparring-session-with-dricus-du-plessis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mmamag.ma\/en\/israel-adesanya-talks-about-an-old-sparring-session-with-dricus-du-plessis\/","title":{"rendered":"Israel Adesanya talks about an old sparring session with Dricus Du Plessis"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong>Israel Adesanya has already indicated he\u2019d be happy to defend his middleweight title against Dricus Du Plessis next, and the\u00a0UFC\u00a0champion recently revealed he and the South African actually sparred together early in their careers.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">On July 8, Dricus Du Plessis will meet Robert Whittaker on the UFC 290 card. The winner of this clash should get a fight against current middleweight champion Israel Adesanya.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The \u201cLast Stylebender\u201d has already made it known that he would prefer to make his next title defense against the South African, rather than having a trilogy fight against Whittaker. Adesnaya and Du Plessis trained together at the start of their respective careers, during a training camp in Thailand.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u201cI remember that. We really practiced. Adesanya said of Du Plessis during his recent appearance on Logan Paul&#8217;s Impulsive podcast. \u201cTraining is training. I came from China. I was doing kickboxing there, I was not doing MMA. I was only kickboxing. \u00bb<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">&#8220;So we practiced, I don&#8217;t know if we did two rounds or just one, it was so long ago. It\u2019s 2014\u2026 So long ago, I remember in grappling he beat me. But as for striking, I just destroyed it. \u00bb<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Israel Adesanya, who reclaimed the middleweight title by defeating Alex Pereira by knockout at UFC 287, has already beaten every top-5 player in the division. Many therefore hope to see the 33-year-old fighter face the new challenge of Dricus Du Plessis, ranked number 6.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">However, the \u201cStillknocks\u201d will have to get rid of former division champion Robert Whittaker first. The Australian intends to dismiss Du Plessis and get the opportunity to avenge his two losses against Adesanya.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\"  id=\"_ytid_98973\"  width=\"696\" height=\"391\"  data-origwidth=\"696\" data-origheight=\"391\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/0uG3iZrPcNc?enablejsapi=1&#038;autoplay=0&#038;cc_load_policy=0&#038;cc_lang_pref=&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;loop=0&#038;modestbranding=0&#038;rel=1&#038;fs=1&#038;playsinline=0&#038;autohide=2&#038;theme=dark&#038;color=red&#038;controls=1&#038;\" class=\"__youtube_prefs__  epyt-is-override  no-lazyload\" title=\"YouTube player\"  allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen data-no-lazy=\"1\" data-skipgform_ajax_framebjll=\"\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Israel Adesanya has already indicated he\u2019d be happy to defend his middleweight title against Dricus Du Plessis next, and the\u00a0UFC\u00a0champion recently revealed he and the South African actually sparred together early in their careers.\u00a0 On July 8, Dricus Du Plessis will meet Robert Whittaker on the UFC 290 card. The winner of this clash should [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1320,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45,21],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1319","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mma","8":"category-ufc-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmamag.ma\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1319"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmamag.ma\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmamag.ma\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmamag.ma\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmamag.ma\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1319"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mmamag.ma\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1319\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1321,"href":"https:\/\/mmamag.ma\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1319\/revisions\/1321"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmamag.ma\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmamag.ma\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmamag.ma\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmamag.ma\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}