UFC News: Israel Adesanya not interested in being double champion; reveals how many title defenses he wants in 2019

Israel Adesanya is going to have a very busy 2019. He's been one of the most active fighters on the roster since joining and has been undefeated in his journey to becoming the undisputed UFC Middleweight Champion.

His next opponent was originally supposed to be the Brazillian powerhouse Paulo Costa, but due to an injury, Costa will be out for atleast 8 months. Adesanya, not wanting to wait that long, has requested Yoel Romero to be his next opponent just so he can "shut the casuals up".

In an interview with ESPN, Adesanya was asked about becoming a double champion, i.e, moving up to Light Heavyweight to face Jon Jones - a man who he's had quite the beef with.

However, Adesanya affirmed that he wants to defend the Middleweight Champion and do his due justice to it, saying:

"I just won the belt. I have to pay respect to the game and do right by the belt. The division has been held hostage for so long. I want to defend my belt four times next year and then I'll go up to 205 and f**k him [Jon Jones] up."

This is something that fans are going to love hearing. The Middleweight Championship has been in a bad state since Michael Bisping won it back in 2016. He defended the title successfully once against the #13 ranked Dan Henderson (who many deemed as an unworthy challenger) and then lost it a year later to Georges St-Pierre, who vacated the title shortly after.

Robert "The Reaper" Whittaker was the undisputed champion following that, but his fight against Yoel Romero last year was technically a non-title bout due to Romero missing weight. After that, he was supposed to face Kelvin Gastelum but pulled out and only made a title defense in October 2019, where he lost.

Adesanya hopes to be the man to revive the title and if he is, he'll have to go through a shark tank to do so.