Israel Adesanya claims the UFC originally didn’t want to give Sean Strickland the title shot in fears of “embarrassing the company”

Israel Adesanya claims the UFC wasn’t originally interested in having Sean Strickland fight for the middleweight title.

The original plan was for Adesanya to defend his middleweight title at UFC 293 in Australia against the winner of Dricus Du Plessis vs. Robert Whittaker. ‘DDP’ ended up winning by TKO, but he suffered a foot injury, and couldn’t fight on that date.

After it was revealed that Du Plessis wouldn’t be able to make the date, Israel Adesanya was vocal in trying to secure a fight with Sean Strickland. However, he says the UFC weren’t initially interested in the fight, as they were worried Strickland would embarrass the promotion.

“A lot. Like I said, he’s an idiot and you know, the UFC don’t want him embarrassing the company. But yeah, that’s all I’ll say about that so he should thank me. He should really thank me for making him get the fight. I pushed for it, he (coach Eugene Bareman) knows what happened behind the scenes and I pushed for it and I’m glad the UFC trusted me to listen to me,” Adesanya said to It’s Time For Sports.

RELATED: Jamahal Hill explained why he wasn’t impressed with Aex Pereira’s light heavyweight debut.

Adesanya vows to break Strickland’s jaw

Ultimately, the UFC ended up booking Israel Adesanya vs. Sean Strickland to headline UFC 293 in Australia in September.

It’s a fight that Adesanya pushed for as he believes it’s a good style matchup for him and he vows to break Strickland’s jaw and make it a dominant performance.

“If he’s talking to me, he’s going to get his jaw broken because when you’re talking, you’re not focused on the task at hand. Look at (Paulo) Costa… Even if it’s five rounds of just dominance and styling on him, display of martial arts, I will be happy with that. But I just don’t see that happening. I’m going to knock him out. One plus one is two: I’m going to knock him out,” Adesanya said on his YouTube channel.

Israel Adesanya enters his UFC 293 title defense against Sean Strickland coming off a KO win over Alex Pereira to reclaim his belt.