SADDLE RIVER, N.J. — Israel Adesanya, finally in a somewhat quiet moment after a busy afternoon, sat down at a marble countertop and opened a black plastic-foam box.
He was almost through his promotional activities for the day as the Ultimate Fighting Championship’s middleweight champion — including interviews and photo shoots while working around training — and he was hungry. He needed a quesadilla.
“Better to do this now than next week,” Adesanya, 33, said last Thursday as he wiped crumbs from his lips. He dipped his takeout food into more cheese and pico de gallo salsa as he sat in the kitchen of a sprawling three-story, $12.8-million estate in a wooded, wealthy New York City suburb, a mansion that his team has rented in the run-up to his next title defense on Saturday night.
Promotional obligations for fighters always intensify as bouts get closer, and the demands are especially immense for Adesanya (23-1-0). He is the biggest active star for the world’s largest mixed martial arts organization, and he is set to headline U.F.C. 281 against Alex Pereira (6-1-0) on Saturday at Madison Square Garden.
When Adesanya squares up against Pereira, he will be facing two foes.
The first is Pereira himself, who bested Adesanya twice in the earlier stages of their careers on the kickboxing circuit. The other is a mounting criticism that Adesanya, whose marketable theatrical personality helped propel him to mainstream recognition, fights with an unappealing style for average fans.
Adesanya is confident that he can overcome both. But if you still think he is boring, he said he wouldn’t care. To him, that’s your fault.
“They’re blessed to watch me fight — I’m just being honest,” Adesanya said. “When I’m gone, they’re going to realize it, but they can’t appreciate it right now because I’m still here.”
Adesanya, who was born in Nigeria and grew up in New Zealand, won the U.F.C. middleweight 185-pound championship in April 2019, just over a year after he joined the promotion. He is undefeated in the division and suffered his only loss in mixed martial arts in 2021 when he challenged Jan Blachowicz for the 205-pound light heavyweight belt. Saturday will be his seventh middleweight title defense.
Adesanya’s charisma outside the octagon complemented his feats inside of it, which expedited his track to stardom. Adesanya is nicknamed “The Last Stylebender” a nod to the mid-2000s Nickelodeon cartoon “Avatar: The Last Airbender,” and he incorporates numerous anime references into his persona. He is creative with his walkout entrances, and in his most recent fight at U.F.C. 276 in July, he honored the Undertaker, an iconic figure in World Wrestling Entertainment, by slowly marching to the octagon in a brimmed top hat and holding an urn for the symbolic ashes of his opponent, Jared Cannonier.
Adesanya, who regularly documents his life on YouTube, said he tried to be himself, which he thinks has separated him from other champions.
“I’ve just been the coolest at it,” Adesanya said. “The way I’ve handled it, the way I’ve done it, the way I’ve carried myself — I feel like no one has done it like me.”
Adesanya’s rise came at a time when the U.F.C. was expanding its business and fan base. The promotion in 2018 signed a new media rights deal with ESPN, which offered more prominent exposure for athletes.
Since then, the U.F.C. has sought more mainstream stars to succeed those from previous years, including the retired Ronda Rousey and the active but not very active star Conor McGregor, who is rehabilitating from a broken leg in 2021 yet is still perhaps the sport’s biggest draw despite losing three of his past four fights and experiencing some legal troubles.
Adesanya has fought at least twice a year since joining the U.F.C., and he quickly became a dependable linchpin for the company’s fight calendar. He said he accepted his level of fame last year after initially shying away from it. Dana White, the U.F.C. president, said Adesanya capitalized on the opportunity.
“He’s always on people’s minds,” White said last week in a telephone interview. “The world is so crazy right now, and people can forget about you quick with their own problems, but he doesn’t let you. He’s in your face all the time.”
Adesanya has enjoyed the benefits. He signed a new contract with the U.F.C. in February, and celebrities like Drake have publicly supported him before his fights.
But the good will from fans has perhaps reached a crossroads. Adesanya has not knocked out an opponent since 2020, and his last three fights were unanimous decisions against Marvin Vettori, Robert Whittaker and Cannonier. In those three contests, he lost only three of 15 total rounds, using his 80-inch reach and precise striking skills to tactically attack his opponents. Adesanya said he thought those fights were not as competitive because those opponents struggled to gauge his range and movement, making them timid.
“I put on fantastic shows with a small margin for error,” Adesanya said. “People don’t understand, man, that I do this to these guys, and I make them look silly. These guys are not average, but they can’t do anything with me.”
Some fans, who crave knockouts and bloody showstoppers, have labeled his risk-averse style boring, unlike that of McGregor, who routinely knocked foes out with a powerful left hand, and of Rousey, who rose to fame with a string of quick arm-bar submissions.
In the closing seconds of Adesanya’s bout against Cannonier, boos rained inside T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas for the perceived lack of action. Adesanya said he heard the discussion but said he would not change his approach.
“People just expect, when you’re as great as I am, they just expect you to always show out and show off, which I do, but sometimes it’s just not the way it plays out,” Adesanya said. “I think that’s just what society does — they build you up so they can tear you down.”
He added: “It’s a high-level game we play, but not everyone who watches is high-level.”
Adesanya is not the first combat sports star to face such criticism. The boxer Floyd Mayweather and the former U.F.C. champions Georges St. Pierre, Khabib Nurmagomedov and Tyron Woodley have all at points been branded as dull. White, who in the past has publicly admonished fighters after bouts he felt were too docile, said he had no issue with Adesanya’s recent performances. He compared it to football, saying each pass was not a Hail Mary and each Super Bowl was not a high-scoring affair.
Eugene Bareman, Adesanya’s longtime coach at City Kickboxing, the powerhouse gym in Auckland, New Zealand, said that he had emphasized being calculated rather than flashy during fights.
“Make no mistake, my job is to get him a win in the most pleasing fashion to the crowd, to the U.F.C. and to his management,” Bareman said in an interview. “But the line we won’t cross is where we’re willing to go out there with our chin out and just risk too much for that result. We won’t cross that line and just go out there recklessly and risk everything that he and everyone around him for years have worked so hard for.”
Adesanya said he is confident his fight with Pereira would be different because he expects Pereira to press forward and be aggressive in stand-up exchanges. Pereira beat Adesanya via decision in a kickboxing bout in 2016, then knocked him out a year later in a rematch.
Bareman said he had been more demanding on Adesanya this training camp, and they arrived to the United States from New Zealand earlier than usual with more than 25 people, a group that includes training partners, coaches and dietitians.
Should Adesanya defeat Pereira, the U.F.C.’s options for his next opponent are limited. Other than Pereira, Adesanya has defeated the top six ranked middleweight contenders, including Vettori and Whittaker twice. The logical next step seems to be another challenge for the light heavyweight belt, but Adesanya said he did not want to look too far ahead.
“I’m just focused on this guy because if I don’t get through this guy, all of my plans are failed,” Adesanya said.
After the interview concluded and Adesanya finished his quesadilla, he went to one of the home’s nine bathrooms to prepare for another photo shoot while his teammates swam in the indoor pool. As he walked toward the camera set in the mansion’s garage, a U.F.C. public-relations manager, with a laptop in hand, informed Adesanya that he had another set of videoconference calls afterward.
Adesanya, clearly losing energy, put his hand calmly on the manger’s shoulder and politely asked, “Is it OK if we do those tomorrow?”
Adesanya soon agreed to do them anyway, after learning the day ahead was already spoken for.
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