New Zealand UFC lightweight Dan Hooker confirmed that his star teammate, the former middleweight champion of the promotion Israel Adesanya offered to lead the UFC 300 anniversary tournament.
“I would like Dana White to talk about what happened behind the scenes. Because as far as I know, Israel was ready to fight at UFC 300. I think the thing is that Du Plessis took a lot of damage in the five-round fight with Strickland, so it was difficult to ask him to come back so quickly.
Drikus had already refused to fight with Israel. He was scheduled to face Adesanya in Sydney when Israel ended up fighting Strickland. Du Plessis had some problems and he didn’t want to take any risks. So I wasn’t surprised that he didn’t want to take that risk for UFC 300,” Hooker was quoted as saying by MMA Mania.
