The UFC middleweight champion Israel Adesanya will apparently be skipping moving up to the light heavyweight division and will instead move straight up to the heavyweight division to face off against the UFC heavyweight champion Stipe Miocic.
Adesanya’s coach Bareman told MMA Junkie in a recent interview that Israel will directly take on Miocic and create history. He also criticized Jon Jones’ reluctance to move up to heavyweight and face Miocic. Here’s what he had to say:
Jon Jones so far has not been willing to go to heavyweight. He’s been reluctant to go to heavyweight. Am I correct? Well, Israel wouldn’t be reluctant to go to heavyweight. Israel would go to heavyweight and he would fight Stipe Miocic. There you go. We’ll take that fight, Jon Jones. If you don’t want to take it, you can hang around at light heavyweight. We’ll skip light heavyweight and we’ll take that fight off you. There’s some more bait there, so Jon Jones can bite on it and start doing what he does, like what these guys do. But we’ll take the fight. Don’t worry about it, Jon Jones.
Let’s talk about Stipe. If we have to talk about this super-fight, let’s talk about Stipe. Let’s talk about Israel going up. Has anybody gone up and won two titles, but skipped a division? Well, there you go. There’s a bit of history.
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