Robert Whittaker isn’t exactly known for his trash talk outside of the octagon, which is why ‘The Reaper’ felt out of his element in the leadup to his middleweight title bout with Israel Adesanya at UFC 243.
Whittaker lost that fight via second-round KO and, although he suffered a mental burnout in the weeks leading up to the fight, the former UFC middleweight champion says Adesanya’s pre-fight trash talk played a notable factor in the result and was the ‘cherry on top’ of everything else.
“I think it was one more thing that piled on top,” Whittaker said of Adesanya’s pre-fight trash talk in a recent interview with MMA Tonight (transcript via Abhinav Kini of The Body Lock).