Israel Adesanya: Last night was a night of personal triumph for Mr Adesanya. He decisively defeated a career nemesis, the great Brazilian kickboxer Alex Pereira and regained his title as the best middleweight in MMA. Perhaps even more than this, Mr Adesanya furnished an extremely important lesson to the martial arts world that merit consideration. On the face of things it would seem that going into the fight last night Mr Adesanya was facing an onerous task. The two athletes had met three times before. In kickboxing, Mr Pereira won via KO and a unanimous decision. Then he followed his rival into MMA and KO'ed him again to take away his title. On the surface it would seem Mr Pereira had his number. Three fights – three decisive wins. This leads us to a crucial lesson – THE RESULTS alone NEVER TELL THE WHOLE STORY. When most people watch a fight – they only remember the result. By that logic Mr Adesanya didn't stand a chance last night. However, in two of this fights, Mr Adesanya had been doing extremely well before being caught by the impressive punching power of Mr Pereira. There was definitely enough in the first three fights to show that Mr Adesanya was capable of winning despite the lopsided results. Again, THE RESULTS DON'T ALWAYS TELL THE WHOLE STORY – AND ITS THE WHOLE STORY THAT FURNISHES THE ENDING. Mr Adesanya taught us all a lesson in reading the whole story rather than the summary – don't count yourself out based on past results alone – often the truth is much more nuanced than that – make your assessments on the whole picture to get a more real appraisal of what you can do and what you need to do. Very often you'll see that you've got a better chance than many people believe.
