Israel Adesanya reveals he tore his MCL a week before UFC 287 fight against Alex Pereira

Israel Adesanya entered his UFC 287 fight against Alex Pereira with an injury.

Adesanya rematched Pereira on April 8th for the middleweight title he lost back in November of 2022 by fifth-round TKO. After the loss, ‘The Last Stylebender’ was vocal in wanting an immediate rematch as he was confident that he had all the tools needed to win. Yet, the week before the fight, Adesanya says he tore his MCL.

Although Israel Adesanya suffered a Grade 1 MCL tear – and proved it with video footage of the incident – he had no plans to pull out. Instead, he pointed to the other times he entered fights injured and had a lot of success.

“I’ve been here before,” Adesanya said (via MMAFighting). “My UFC debut, three weeks out, I did my right ankle. I remember the next day, or that night, calling [his physiotherapist], and being like, ‘Yo, I need to see you tomorrow, ASAP.’ … He had to like, re-injure it, or cause pain to it — I don’t know, it’s f****** magic or whatever, but I remember biting on a towel and sitting there in pain, screaming as he’s f****** massaging my hurt ankle where it’s not supposed to be massaged, because it hurt, but you’re supposed to. So, that’s one. [Derek] Brunson fight, I hurt my knee three weeks beforehand. I remember pops saying take five days off and just do nothing. It was really bad.

“I took five days off … three weeks before the biggest fight of my life at [Madison Square Garden]. I just took it off and then locked it in, locked it down. It’s all part of the story. This is meant to happen. No one wants anything like this to happen, but if you can’t change your circumstances, change your perspective,” Adesanya continued. “So I was like, ‘This has happened. This is my perspective. This was meant to happen. I’ll overcome this.’ So the comeback of getting from then to the cage was already a big win for me, because after doing that — because that was really f****** bad — but I was like, if I can get through that and get to the cage, this fight, I can get through it. So it added to my confidence, added to my fortitude. I was like, they can’t break me.”

(via Cooper Neil/Zuffa LLC)

Even though Israel Adesanya suffered a Grade 1 MCL tear, he ended up scoring a second-round KO of Alex Pereira to reclaim the middleweight.

Now, however, Adesanya is healing up his knee and will return later this year when he faces the winner of Robert Whittaker vs. Dricus Du Plessis at UFC 290 in July.

What do you make of Israel Adesanya fighting at UFC 287 with a torn MCL?