Robert Whittaker and Israel Adesanya have officially formed an unlikely alliance.
In the middleweight division’s history, there has arguably only been one fighter — Anderson Silva — with a more impressive legacy than the pair of former UFC champions. Whittaker and Adesanya made history together, breaking the UFC attendance record in their first of two fights at UFC 243 in 2019.
The rivalry between the legends was more competitive than personal. Despite that, imagining Whittaker and Adesanya ever being friendly — let alone training together — felt like a stretch. That was until last week when they surprised the world with images on social media of them together in the gym before filming YouTube content.
Whittaker explained Wednesday on “The Ariel Helwani Show” how he’d recently contemplated more training options, and one thing led to another after his coach, Alex Prates, hatched the idea.
“We had our rivalry, we had our time, but there’s a lot of young blood now in the division, there’s a lot of guys coming up,” Whittaker said. “The chance of us crossing paths again was super low to begin with. So yeah, that’s kind of where our headspace was. My coach reached out to [City Kickboxing coach] Eugene [Bareman], said, ‘Hey, I think we’re gonna bring some boys over. Let’s chat. Let’s see how we get along.’
“It was so left field because I guess I was so locked into my headspace that we have been rivals, and just I didn’t even think about it. I was thinking of places like L.A., and I was thinking of training in Miami and different places. I was looking all up in Asia as well, like where we could go to try and get some training in. In some way, I could take my family for the course of a month. It wasn’t until he goes — he sits me down, and he goes, ‘Mate, you know where we need to go.’ And I, honestly, couldn’t work it out. I was just so blinded to that possibility that is City Kickboxing, and then I was like, ‘Wow, yeah.’
“I was very receptive straight away,” he concluded. “It makes perfect sense. I stopped having any sort of emotions over a rivalry years ago. You put that behind you.”
Whittaker’s first Adesanya loss came via a stunning second-round knockout. When the lights shined brightest, “The Last Stylebender” showed up and showed out to spoil “The Reaper’s” big homecoming title defense, ending Whittaker’s reign to start his own.
It was a different story when they eventually met for their rematch three years later. Whittaker couldn’t exact revenge on his successor, but he put up a significantly better performance en route to a unanimous decision loss.
Having spent two full camps for each other and seven rounds in the Octagon together, Whittaker was more concerned with what he’d face entering former enemy territory. Thankfully, it was all more positive than he anticipated.
“I guess apprehensive is the word,” Whittaker said of walking into City Kickboxing. “I wasn’t nervous, but I didn’t know how things were going to be. I didn’t know if the first session, we were going to line up, if they’d have a crew of 20 guys ready to spar me, ready to fight. You know what I mean? But it was nothing like that. I just slot into their sessions, moving around, helping Izzy as much as I could, in any way he wanted. I was moving with the other boys. We were just training, and it felt really natural and organic. Nothing was kind of forced, and Izzy himself, he was probably the most receptive of everybody there. I think he was really open to the idea. I think we’re just both in good places in our career right now.”
The former champions’ collaboration comes at a good time for Adesanya, who nears his next fight. In UFC Saudi Arabia’s main event Feb. 1 against Nassourdine Imavov, Adesanya looks to get back in the win column for the first time since knocking out Alex Pereira in April 2023.
Whittaker wasn’t part of Adesanya’s camp, and their friendship is still new. But the possibility exists to keep visiting City Kickboxing and learning under Prates and Bareman’s dual coaching.
“This was just a really short stint. We only went for five days,” Whittaker said. “Honestly, more important than the training was, do we get along? Like, will this work? Can everybody bury the hatchet and can we get to this idea and get the training that we need to get done? Honestly, everyone was so receptive. We have heaps of skillsets that they can benefit from, and vice-versa. They have lots of bodies because they’re a bigger MMA-dedicated gym. I think we both seem to gain a lot from this relationship. I’m very, super, super happy to have made the connection.”
If there was any chance to see a third Whittaker and Adesanya fight, it shrunk to 0% after this past week. Whittaker has no intentions of agreeing to an offer for the trilogy if it came his way, and he believes his counterpart feels the same.
Whittaker, 34, last fought in October 2024, when he suffered a nasty first-round face-crank loss to Khamzat Chimaev at UFC 308. The loss resulted in Whittaker’s bottom front teeth gruesomely breaking off his gums, requiring surgery. While he’s mostly healed, there’s no rush to return, as the former champ targets June for his next time out.
“I felt amazing,” Whittaker said of going into the Chimaev fight. “I understand that it didn’t head in the direction that I wanted it to, but I felt great. And that’s kind of the more disappointing thing than losing the fight and hurting my teeth and all that. It was just that I didn’t get to — and this was all due to his part, like, great game plan. Did what he did, right? But I didn’t get the opportunity to show how far I had come, the distance I had traveled skill-wise from the fight prior.”
