{"id":5218,"date":"2025-01-29T13:12:03","date_gmt":"2025-01-29T12:12:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mmamag.ma\/en\/?p=5218"},"modified":"2025-01-30T13:14:13","modified_gmt":"2025-01-30T12:14:13","slug":"israel-adesanya-reflects-on-his-rivalry-with-alex-pereira-god-blessed-me-with-this-challenge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mmamag.ma\/en\/israel-adesanya-reflects-on-his-rivalry-with-alex-pereira-god-blessed-me-with-this-challenge\/","title":{"rendered":"Israel Adesanya Reflects on His Rivalry with Alex Pereira: &#8220;God Blessed Me with This Challenge&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Just days before his highly anticipated fight against Frenchman <strong>Nassourdine Imavov<\/strong> at <strong>UFC Saudi Arabia&#8217;s main event<\/strong>, former champion <strong>Israel Adesanya<\/strong> revisited his legendary rivalry with Brazilian <strong>Alex Pereira<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">&#8220;It&#8217;s easy to say it now, but damn, it took a lot of courage to face a man like him!&#8221;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-5219 alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/mmamag.ma\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/GiaTT4TWYAA_5qE-300x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/mmamag.ma\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/GiaTT4TWYAA_5qE-300x300.jpg 300w, https:\/\/mmamag.ma\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/GiaTT4TWYAA_5qE-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/mmamag.ma\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/GiaTT4TWYAA_5qE-768x768.jpg 768w, https:\/\/mmamag.ma\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/GiaTT4TWYAA_5qE-696x696.jpg 696w, https:\/\/mmamag.ma\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/GiaTT4TWYAA_5qE.jpg 800w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/>On Saturday, Adesanya will take on a new challenge in the <strong>middleweight division (-84 kg)<\/strong>, this time without the championship belt he defended for years. Interestingly, this will be his first non-title fight since <strong>UFC 236 in 2019<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">In an interview with journalist <strong>Ariel Helwani<\/strong>, Adesanya spoke about his <strong>intense rivalry<\/strong> with &#8220;Poatan&#8221; Pereira, whom he faced <strong>twice in kickboxing and twice in MMA<\/strong>. The former middleweight champion emphasized how crucial these fights were in his career:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">&#8220;God blessed me with a great rival like Alex Pereira and with an immense challenge that helped me grow.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">In response to these remarks, <strong>Pereira<\/strong> expressed his gratitude to Adesanya, explaining that <strong>without this rivalry, he might not have reached the heights he enjoys today<\/strong> as a two-division champion.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">After their fierce battles, it seems that the relationship between <strong>Adesanya and Pereira<\/strong> has shifted from <strong>bitter rivalry to mutual respect<\/strong>. But does this mean their story is truly over? Or could fate bring them together once again inside the octagon?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Just days before his highly anticipated fight against Frenchman Nassourdine Imavov at UFC Saudi Arabia&#8217;s main event, former champion Israel Adesanya revisited his legendary rivalry with Brazilian Alex Pereira. &#8220;It&#8217;s easy to say it now, but damn, it took a lot of courage to face a man like him!&#8221; On Saturday, Adesanya will take on [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5220,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45,21],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-5218","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\/5218"}],"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=5218"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mmamag.ma\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5218\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5221,"href":"https:\/\/mmamag.ma\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5218\/revisions\/5221"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmamag.ma\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmamag.ma\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmamag.ma\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmamag.ma\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}