Israel Adesanya: You Can’t Stop M2’s Man of the Year 2020
To be the best in the world is a massive achievement. What a feeling it must be, scrambling up that last steep, slippery, rubble-strewn slope to finally stand atop the peak of your profession and gaze down on everyone else you used to look up to. Content. Victorious. Justified.
Sure, some world beaters are hailed louder than others; for every Roger Federer there is a Marcelo Rios; for every Tiger Woods there a dozen Sergio Garcias; and for every Lennon & McCartney you’ll find thousands of Soft Cells. Yet then there are the undisputed champions who so dominate their respective fields that no one is left with any doubt whatsoever as to their legendary status. This is the world where Kelly Slater lives polishing his 11 world surfing championship trophies, where Bill Gates lounges about counting all the obscene stacks of money he made with Microsoft and where Lewis Hamilton pops along to rack up yet another Formula One Championship.
Such extraordinary champions are rare in New Zealand, although we have had Sir Richard Hadlee, whom even the mighty Aussie cricketers feared at his peak, Dame Susan Devoy who simply owned women’s squash for close to a decade – and now we have Israel Adesanya.
TOTAL DOMINANCE
2020 was a pretty good year for Israel Adesanya. He was able to twice successfully defend his UFC Middleweight Championship crown to improve his record to 20-0 and pick up yet another Performance of the Night award for his destruction of the previously unbeaten Brazilian, Paulo Costa. But Israel doesn’t just hop into an incredibly expensive piece of automotive machinery, sign off a risky company acquisition or kick a football into an empty net in order to become the world’s best – no, he climbs into an octagonal steel-linked cage with some of the toughest, meanest and most brutal fighters on the face of the planet and beats the c**p out of them. Regularly and almost off-handedly!
He was so dominant this year, Israel has moved up into the top five UFC men’s pound-for-pound ratings. This should really be of little surprise as in every fight he appears to set the tone and pace; forcing his opponent into a position where Israel can surgically pick him off seemingly at will. The opponent quickly developing bloodied and forlorn features while Israel Adesanya looks unruffled – as though he were a tuxedoed James Bond dismantling faceless S.P.E.C.T.R.E. thugs absent-mindedly whilst chatting up pretty lycra-clad girls. He is so in control of his fights; his victory always appears inevitable. But how?
MENTAL VS PHYSICAL
Watching any Israel fight, you are struck at just how in control he is physically; tall, lean and limber. He also has astonishing speed. But, as the sports commentator bores always wah on about; those who have class in sport always seem to have more ‘time’ in action. And they’re right; John McEnroe had it, Dan Carter had it; and there is absolutely no doubt that Israel Adesanya has it – that elusive ability to coolly see what your opponent is doing during the heat of battle and adjust at the last second to land your punch/kick/cross court smash.
Then during the fight itself, Israel is like a Streetfighter character who can do all these impossible moves; helicopter kicks come out of nowhere to cuff the side of an opponent’s head or, in spinning to avoid a punch, an Adesanya elbow reverse cracks an astonished jaw. As Israel’s parents say from watching their son face off against inferior fighters so many times, “it’s just two different levels.”
Part of that distancing from the ordinary comes from superb and meticulous physical conditioning; endless skills training in a massive stack of disciplines, including wrestling, taekwondo, kickboxing, boxing and dance but more importantly; also in mental training. And this is where Israel Adesanya excels beyond most.
He has cobbled together a philosophy he calls his ‘software’ that enables him to mix humility with extreme confidence into a potent cocktail of mental toughness that has so far proved invulnerable at the highest levels of one of the toughest sports imaginable.
You can see the strength this confidence gives Israel before each fight as he crouches down in the ring hanging off the fence simply waiting patiently for the referee to start the fight so he can leap across the canvas and begin demolishing his opponent. Like the legendary Mike Tyson, Israel appears completely unconcerned by the quality or otherwise of whoever he’s facing, merely regarding the impending fight as some simple chore to be completed, like brushing his teeth or unpacking his groceries.
And you can see how this very same supreme confidence in Israel completely unnerves the majority of his opponents so their eyes show a haunted dread of looming defeat before they even meet in the middle. And these are world-ranked UFC fighters! Not that their heart can be questioned, as an ex-MMA fighter told me once; “No man or woman whomever climbs into an octagon can ever have their courage doubted, even for a second! It is the hardest challenge you can face on this earth outside of staring down a knife or bullet.” And he should know, he was also in the British SAS.
OPERATING THE SOFTWARE
Perhaps the secret to Israel Adesanya’s software is that he has developed it to be the same graceful balance between aggression and empathy that he demonstrates in his ringcraft. Again and again in interviews he describes how he changes the ratios of two opposites to find the balance he desires or offsets one strong emotion with an equally powerful opposite.
For example; in the weeks before a fight he talks of his training being; “70% physical, 30% mental. But then by the time it’s fight week, it flips. It’s 80% mental and 20% physical because all the physical work is done. There’s not really much else you can do to add to your physical game, it’s all about how you operate the software.” Then after the fight – and his inevitable victory – it’s; “Afterwards, I have a compassion. (My opponents) were trying to do to the same thing to me, but I did it to them today. I respect that and I feel grateful for the chance to do that to them.”
The source of his sense of balance possibly comes from his love for the Airbender cartoon which he watched as a boy – and still does today – and is the inspiration for his fight name of The Last Stylebender; “I felt I could relate to the power of the Avatar, who mastered the control of the four elements of fire, water, air and earth. I feel that even though I don’t know how the game is going, I have to realise my destiny by mastering all the elements of martial arts.”
This sense of self-imposed balance between varying forces frees Israel Adesanya up from the weighty self-destructive thoughts and emotions that plague most elite athletes; “In this job, there is always pressure. I have always been under pressure since my first professional fight back in 2008. But I have never allowed it to bother me or get to me. The pressure keeps building up and getting higher because the expectation from fans and others also keeps increasing.”
He notes how this exposure can break even the sternest opponent and vowed it would not happen to him; “With a lot of men, I can just smell the doubt, the insecurities, the fear. Everyone has it, I have it as well but I just know how to channel mine in the right place and the right time. I have a saying, ‘Pressure makes diamonds’.”
In order to deal with that ever-growing expectation of success building on his shoulders, Israel just simplifies his career down into merely something he enjoys doing; “I am not scared to fail. The fear of failure has sent a lot of fighters down the ranks but I just want to fight and enjoy what I am doing – with no pressure.”
Much of this was learned from his year spent in China; “I know guys who were fighting that didn’t like it, they were just good at it and were getting paid good money to do it but it wasn’t something they wanted to do. This is something I want to do; this is something I’m very good at.”
DEALING WITH FAME
Becoming successful at what you do is one thing, dealing with the consequences of that is a whole other thing, and the history books are littered with tales of shooting stars who burned out quickly because they found that dealing with a sudden fame was just too much. Like many others, Israel found the impact of overnight stardom hard to take when the glare of the limelight after his first UFC fight knocked him off his stride; “I wasn’t ready for the influx of attention, the influx of people. Even at the after party, I wasn’t having fun the way that I’d like to. I was constantly being bombarded.”
Sadly, part of that attention always seems to quickly turn negative and in this age of social media, things can also get out of control very quickly. “There was all this negative attention that I didn’t want and I wasn’t ready for. So I just turned my phone off for about 5 or 6 hours and just tried to stay off it for a day and just recuperate myself and reset.”
He realises that as much as his flamboyant fighting style is responsible for his success in the ring, it is also a driver for his fame outside of it too.
After all, it was his clinical striking style, dance-like moves and athletic kicks in kickboxing that caught the eye of the UFC in the first place. They, like Israel himself, saw his fighting style as ‘art’ so had little trouble understanding its attraction to the fans. Israel says; “I feel like most people would be drawn to what I’m doing because it’s beautiful violence.” So if that is the game, he’s happy to play it.
GRATEFUL FOR THE CHANCE
‘No Pain, No Gain’. Sports people like short, pithy, inspirational – and preferably rhyming – quotes as you can blow them up large onto a poster and stick them up on the wall of the gym to look at while you are busting your butt doing that 700th rep of the day. Often such quotes are the only thing between you and failure during training as there will come a point when absolutely everything else has been drained from the tank.
The added bonus is that, having stared for so long at an inspirational quote, it gets into your very soul so it becomes a pillar for your personality. One such quote Israel uses is; ‘Gratitude is my Attitude’ and he certainly has adopted it as part of his life force.
Listen to anything he says and before long you will hear the genuine thankfulness for the experiences he’s enjoyed on his path to the top. This ranges from the gratitude – or is it relief? – that his parents learned to accept his career choice and become his greatest fans through to the gruelling times he went through fighting in China. “I’d just wake up, eat, train, sleep, repeat. You level up so much because you’re fighting every two weeks. One month, I fought three times. You can’t get that in New Zealand. It’s something you can’t buy, experience. You fast forward the process. I needed that and I’m grateful for that time.”
Another big career bonus Israel has always been quick to acknowledge is his gym; City Kickboxing. Here, not only has he been under the tutelage of master coach Eugene Bareman, but he is able to share oxygen with a bunch of other top UFC fighters in Kai Kara-France, Alexander Volkanovski and Dan Hooker, although Hooker has left now to form his own gym. It’s what Israel calls ‘New Zealand’s top team’ and having so many top international athletes under the one roof allows all the fighters to relax into the rarefied air of the elite.
They don’t have to suffer in silence as they are surrounded by other fighters who understand exactly what it takes to be the best in the world. And, because of this, there is no need to be constantly proving themselves to one another either. “We have a different mentality, we’re actually cool with each other. You go to most other gyms and it’s a different vibe. Here, everyone is humble, contrary to popular belief. If you can humble yourself and put some work in, you’ll go far.”
And go far he has, as Israel Adesanya is now a legend. An unstoppable force in his chosen sport who has not only dominated his weight category, but forged a physical training regime, fighting style, mental fortitude and values system that will likely be emulated as a blueprint to success by future MMA fighters for many years to come.
Not a bad legacy for a 31-year-old with many potential years still left in the tank!
M2 MAN OF THE YEAR
Like a match in a UFC octagon, there are few rules in deciding who wins the M2 Man of the Year award. Over the years our previous winners have come from a wide variety of sectors of Kiwi society; entrepreneurs, rugby players, movie directors, Olympic athletes, yachtsmen and rocket scientists.
The only things they really had in common was their extraordinary ability to succeed against incredible odds and their undeniable capability to inspire us mere mortals to deeds we previously thought impossible.
This year we welcome yet another diverse new category to our winner’s circle; that of Mixed Martial Arts champion. And as such, we are proud to welcome Israel Adesanya as the latest inspirational Kiwi male to that glorious pantheon of success known as; M2 Man of the Year.
Photography by Damien Van Der Vlist
Israel Adesanya is styled by Vlad Tichen
Read about last year’s M2 Man of the Year, Peter Beck.
