Israel Adesanya wants to retire honourably

Former UFC champion Israel Adesanya appears to be in the final years of his UFC career.

Adesanya hasn’t fought since he was stopped by Nassourdine Imavov earlier this year in his third consecutive loss.

Despite falling to the #6 spot in the middleweight rankings, the former champion remains one of the biggest names on the promotion’s roster.

It isn’t certain when Adesanya will return after his callouts were ignored by a former opponent, but one thing is clear for the 36-year-old.

Israel Adesanya is never going to be short on opponents wanting to fight him due to the name that he has built up in the UFC.

With 18 UFC bouts now under his belt, the former elite kickboxer has been able to accomplish incredible things since signing with the promotion in 2018.

‘The Last Stylebender’ recently sat down with filmmakers Danny and Michael Philippou for an interview posted on the former champion’s YouTube channel.

Towards the end of the conversation, after Adesanya spoke about needing to focus on his career instead of exploring other opportunities for the time being, he spoke about his retirement plans.

While he would ideally hang the gloves up after one last win, Adesanya did refer to ‘The Korean Zombie’ and his retirement fight against Max Holloway in 2023, where he ended his career with a wild exchange that saw him get knocked out.

“It definitely would be a win. That’s what I pray for, that’s what I aim for,” Adesanya said. “It has to be a win. But again, there’s an honourable way, like ‘Korean Zombie’. His last fight was against Max Holloway, and he got badly knocked out.

“But again, he gave that moment where it was, ‘You and me, let’s go. Let’s f—— go,’ and they had that cool exchange and Max got the best of him. He could have got the best of Max, but Max got the best of him.

“Then he’s like, ‘That’s me, I’m done.’ You have to know when to hold them and when to fold them… When I walk away from this, I know for a fact I’ll be done. I’ll be okay with it.”

Earlier in the interview, the topic of Israel Adesanya exploring big opportunities outside of fighting was brought up in relation to a project that Danny and Michael Philippou were both linked to.

The Australian twins, who first started as content creators on YouTube, were set to remake the 1994 movie adaptation of the popular video game series ‘Street Fighter’.

It was revealed in the interview that they were planning on casting Adesanya in the movie.

While the movie is set to release in 2026, the project moved forward without the Philippou brothers due to the schedules clashing with their 2025 release, ‘Bring Her Back’.

The movie may not have Adesanya in the cast, but it does have his fellow City Kickboxing fighter, Alexander Volkanovski.