Adesanya rebuilds away from City Kickboxing ahead of Shara Bullet fight: 'Best I've felt in a very long time'

Israel Adesanya has declared this his best training camp in years after departing City Kickboxing in July, ending a 15-year association with the New Zealand gym as he attempts to reverse a four-fight losing streak. The former two-time UFC middleweight champion is rumoured to face Shara Bullet at UFC Saudi Arabia on 5 December.

Adesanya last won inside the octagon when he knocked out Alex Pereira to recapture the middleweight title in 2022 or 2023 — a moment he references as his last truly sharp camp. Since then, Sean Strickland upset him to end that second reign, and Adesanya was subsequently finished in back-to-back-to-back bouts against Dricus du Plessis, Nassourdine Imavov, and Joe Pyfer.

“Training camp’s been awesome,” Adesanya said in a vlog posted from his new setup. “This is like a cliché, I guess that everyone says, ‘The best training camp I’ve ever had,’ but I can truly say with my departure from my old gym, CKB, and now building the team that I have and training specifically for me, this is the best I’ve felt in a very long time. For real.”

He went further, drawing a direct line between the new environment and his physical condition. “I’ve been in fight week shape for weeks, my regular fight week shape. I look forward to how I’ll look on fight week this time.”

City Kickboxing has long been one of the sport’s most productive gyms, producing UFC champions Alexander Volkanovski and Carlos Ulberg alongside former champion Robert Whittaker and veteran contenders Dan Hooker and Kai Kara-France. Adesanya acknowledged that the scale of the operation may have worked against his own preparation.

When he announced the split, he described it as “bittersweet” without elaborating. In the new vlog he offered a more candid, if still partial, explanation. “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking. I could have been a better teammate because I could have made better bonds at CKB with certain people who I’ve trained with for years. Even though I was a great teammate and I did a lot for a lot of people, I just felt like you can always do more.”

He also hinted at frustrations with the coaching side of the arrangement, though stopped short of naming individuals. “I hid behind them sometimes and just let the idiot take over. But that’s me being self-aware now. I can’t say the same for other people, if they can be self-aware and be like, ‘Yep, I f*cked up as a coach.’” The quote was cut off in the source material before he completed the thought.

At 35, Adesanya remains one of the most decorated middleweights in UFC history, but a return to title contention will require him to end the longest losing run of his professional career. The Shara Bullet matchup, if confirmed, would be his first test of whether the new camp translates to results.