Rob Whittaker set to face winner of UFC 253 title fight between Israel Adesanya and Paulo Costa
He lost the middleweight title nearly one year ago. After some soul-searching, Rob Whittaker is now on a seek and destroy mission to regain the belt. This is his path back to the very top.
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Robert Whittaker is laughing, and he has much to be pleased about.
The Sydney UFC star is two fights away from regaining the middleweight championship belt that put him in the history books.
The UFC will confirm on Sunday, during the broadcast of Israel Adesanya’s title defence against Paulo Costa at UFC 253 in Abu Dhabi’s Yas Island, that the winner must face the victor of Whittaker’s fight against Jared Cannonier.
Whittaker-Cannonier will take place on Sunday, October 25 (AEST), on the same card as the lightweight title showdown between Khabib Nurmagomedov and Justin Gaethje, and will set up a middleweight title fight late this year or early 2021.
But the prospect of being champion again, when many predicted he’d retire from the sport last year, is just part of Whittaker’s reinvention.
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He has revealed that he was suffering from mental exhaustion before and during the title loss last October against Adesanya, his first defeat in six years.
After a lifetime of strict bedtimes and wake-up calls, Whittaker quit training, turned off all the alarms, and reconnected with his friends and family, including his wife and three young children.
It gave the 29-year-old clarity, he rediscovered his hunger for the training, and is now “feeling as good as I ever have”.
In his comeback fight, Whittaker defeated Englishman Darren Till via unanimous decision on July 26.
Now Whittaker has a worrying message for his middleweight rivals.
“It’s the most dangerous Rob, because a happy Rob is a dangerous Rob,” Whittaker told News Corp Australia.
“I’m going in there with nothing holding me back. I’m in there because I want to be there.
“I’m fighting Jared because I want to fight him. And that’s scary, hahaha”
Whittaker (21 wins, five losses) has been told of the chance he’ll soon be king of his division again, but is not overawed.
“It’s no more no less than the first time I got it, it’s just the natural process,” he said.
“I’m happy to be in the game and if I win I’ll get a title shot, and if I win that I’ll be champ, that’s how it goes.”
As for his prediction of Sunday’s Adesanya-Costa battle, Whittaker said: “I think it could be really slow and drawn out, I think Adesanya could pick him off from the outside because of how dangerous Costa is.”
First, he must defeat Cannonier (13 wins, four losses), an American on a three-fight winning streak, all inside six minutes, including a defeat of legend Anderson Silva.
“He’s a very dangerous guy, but I’m too elusive, too quick from the outside, and I hit very hard,” Whittaker said.
“I will wear him down, I’ll be too much for him.”
Whittaker’s road to redemption only became possible when he completely shut off from the world he knew and learned to balance time with his loved ones.
“As soon as I became self-aware and started the soul searching, focusing on my own journey, I was being really true to myself and who I am, and the balance became easy,” he said.
“The pieces of the puzzle fell together.
“I was fortunate enough that I could do this, I took a step to the left, I stopped worrying about things, I stopped working, I stopped training, all my responsibilities I put on pause.
“And I only did what I wanted to do.
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“That sounds like a holiday. The problem with that is when people go on holiday, they feel inclined to do things because they’ve gone away to holiday, whereas I was in a state of limbo, doing absolutely nothing.
“And just having that blank slate, no scheduling, no timetables, having that freedom allowed me to start putting things on paper, it was a form of meditation.
“Then I started layering on the responsibilities, what I should and shouldn’t do, slowly filling it back up decluttered everything else.
“I’d never gone out of my way just to have coffee – I never had time, never had time to go to lunch with mates.
“I was living impulsively, it was weird, I’d been under such a schedule for my entire life pretty much.”