Din Thomas isn’t surprised to see Israel Adesanya on a losing skid at this point in his career.
Adesanya (24-5 MMA, 13-5 UFC) suffered his third-straight loss when he was knocked out by Nassourdine Imavov (16-4 MMA, 8-2 UFC) in this past Saturday’s UFC Fight Night 250 headliner at ANB Arena in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. After defending his UFC middleweight title five times, Adesanya has now lost four of his past five fights.
Thomas says many UFC legends wound up on losing skids to close out their careers, and “The Last Stylebender” is no different.
“Well, that’s just the thing. You know when you make it to the top, and he (Adesanya) is done right? In my opinion at the top-top,” Thomas told MMA on Sirius XM. “But it happens to everybody. No one escapes that except for Jon Jones. It’s a handful, and they’re all on Mount Rushmore.
“Even Anderson Silva fell off. It happens to everybody. This might be a bad message to send to fighters, but if you make it to the top, it comes crashing down hard. Harder than if you don’t make it to the top, and you kind of teeter around the UFC for a while.”
Thomas explained how the likes of himself and co-host Alan Jouban never had to deal with the pressure that UFC champions had to when suffering a loss.
“When you make it to the top top, your losses are always magnified,” Thomas added. “Everybody’s watching them and it looks like a hard fall. It happened to Chuck Liddell, it happened to B.J. Penn, it happened to all the greats, and that’s just what’s happening to Izzy right now.”
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