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Former middleweight champions Robert Whittaker and Israel Adesanya have put their past rivalry behind them and have joined forces. Whittaker posted photos of the two recently training together to social media.
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Adesanya captured the UFC 185-pound championship by defeating Whittaker at UFC 243 in October 2019. Whittaker worked his way back to No. 1 contender status earning a rematch at UFC 271 in February 2022. Adesanya defeated Whittaker a second time but the fight was much closer than their first match.
Whittaker explained how the two training together materialized during an appearance on The Ariel Helwani Show.
“I was sitting down with my team… We were just lacking in bodies. I sat down with my coaches and whatnot and we were kind of hashing out what the plan would be moving forward. We were like, ‘we can bring guys here.’ We could do this, we could do that and started looking at it global, like where we could go to do like little stints or put some training together,” Whittaker explained.
“I’m fortunate enough that we have good friends, or good relations with just about everybody. We could have gone everywhere. The States was a potential but then like a flash of lightning we remember City Kickboxing, New Zealand is two and a half hours away. It makes perfect sense to go there. They have the bodies… They have high-level guys.”
While Whittaker and Adesanya have been rivals in the past, Whittaker doesn’t think their paths will cross again. With a third fight between the two being highly unlikely, working together seemed to make ‘perfect sense.’
“Let’s be honest, me and Izzy had our rivalry. We had our time but there’s a lot of you blood in the division. There’s a lot of guys coming up. The chances of us crossing paths again, it was super low to begin with. That’s kind of where out headspace was,” Whittaker said.
