Israel Adesanya criticizes the way the UFC announced his fight against Robert Whittaker

Israel Adesanya doesn’t think the UFC announced his UFC 271 title fight rematch against Robert Whittaker in the proper way.

Adesanya didn’t sign the bout agreement until this week, but the fight was always going to happen. However, Adesanya wishes the UFC announced this fight on the broadcast in a big way just before a pay-per-view main event and had a trailer ready to go.

“I just didn’t like the way [it was announced],” Adesanya said at media day. “When I asked the next day, I was like ‘did you guys see the announcement?’ and they’re like ‘what announcement?’ No one saw the announcement. I’m like bro, this is not how you announce a fight of this magnitude and that’s because we’re doing some dealings in the back at the moment, so I just felt like the people doing that bit in the UFC dropped the ball…

“You make a little teaser trailer and then you have [Joe] Rogan, [Jon] Anik and [Daniel Cormier] riff about it right after the trailer before the main event,” Adesanya said. “Do I have to do your job for you? I could do it on my phone like literally I can chop it up real quick. But yeah, I was just like what the f*ck kind of announcement is that? Just a little banner like OK that’s it? No, you don’t do that for a championship fight of this magnitude when it’s in Texas. Everything’s bigger in Texas, right? There’s better ways to do that. So that was me expressing myself with a little cap emoji.”

Israel Adesanya is set to headline UFC 271 against Robert Whittaker as he looks to defend his middleweight title for the fourth time. It also serves as a rematch of their 2019 fight in Australia where Adesanya won by second-round TKO to become the new champ.