"Easy Adesanya" - Jared Cannonier talks about his approach to fighting UFC middleweight champion Israel Adesanya
Jared Cannonier has asserted that he’s looking to dominate every facet of his upcoming fight against UFC middleweight champion Israel Adesanya when they clash at UFC 276 on July 2.
Speaking to Ariel Helwani on The MMA Hour, Cannonier shed light on his approach towards their highly-anticipated UFC 276 showdown. Upon being asked whether he’s viewing the Adesanya matchup as the toughest fight of his career, Cannonier stated:
“It’s a safe assumption to make, but what movie was that from? Under Siege 2? I think the bad guy said, ‘Assumption is the mother of all f**k-ups.’ So, I’m not really going to assume anything. Like I said before, I want to make it easy. Easy Adesanya, that’s what I want. I ain’t trying to go in there and have no war with this man where he goes and kicks me into pieces, and touches me up, dances around on me, and has the best night of his life again. Hell no. I’m trying to have the best night of my life.”
Jared Cannonier highlighted that it’d be nice to win without having to face Israel Adesanya for five rounds, as he plans on inflicting damage early on and ending the fight quickly. Cannonier added that he’s getting good at damaging people. He stopped himself from revealing what type of person/fighter he was specifically referring to.
Cannonier refused to expound upon that and emphasized that he doesn’t want to give away his gameplan. Nevertheless, ‘The Killa Gorilla’ explained that he’s putting his mind to the task of seeing things, playing with different concepts and formulas, upgrading old ones, reinventing and preparing himself for arguably the hardest fight of his career.
Furthermore, Cannonier noted that he’s willing to bring in kickboxing savants with similar fighting styles of Adesanya to mimic him in training. Regardless, Cannonier believes that even without such training partners, he already has everything he needs at The MMA Lab in Phoenix, Arizona to beat ‘Izzy’ or anyone else.
Watch Jared Cannonier’s conversation with Ariel Helwani in the video below:
Sean O’Malley on Jared Cannonier’s high-stakes clash against Israel Adesanya
UFC bantamweight star Sean O’Malley is no stranger to Jared Cannonier, having trained with the middleweight at The MMA Lab. In an edition of The BrOMalley Show, ‘Suga’ and his brother Daniel O’Malley discussed the glory that potentially awaits Cannonier.
‘Suga’ pointed out that Israel Adesanya is one of the sport’s pound-for-pound greats today and a win over ‘Izzy’ would be huge for Cannonier. Sean O’Malley said:
"He's [Adesanya] one of the pound-for-pound best in the world right now, probably him and Kamaru [Usman]. So you know, if Jared goes out there and wins that'd be f****** huge."