Israel Adesanya looking to 'shine' against Joe Pyfer

Former two-time middleweight champion Israel Adesanya returns to the octagon on March 28 in the UFC Fight Night 271 main event at Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle, Washington after a year away from completion. "The Last Stylebender" faces No. 14 ranked Joe Pyfer.

Adesanya will enter the bout coming off three consecutive losses. Prior to his last three outings, he had never lost back-to-back times. Having something to prove against Pyfer, Adesanya wants to leave a lasting impression.

"I always feel like I have something to prove. And to myself, right now, what I'm proving to myself, or the story that I'm telling myself, that I'm writing is after a year off and doing all the stuff I was doing outside the game, being successful in other avenues, how am I going to come back after a year off that I've never done before and then like shock the world, shock people, and be like - like what I want to do in this fight is make people got like, 'Ah, he's the man. He's the GOAT.' Like I want people to realize like f*ck, he's that good even after a year off, after he's down three fights now in the skid," Adesanya said on his YouTube channel.

"It's one of those things that I just have to go in there and show them," he continued. "I want to shine. That's the thing, I always want to shine and I will shine. I can't wait. But again, I know what I can do and I feel like people haven't seen my full array of skills yet. I just want to show off a lot of skills that I haven't showed off yet. So, in these fights, not that I'm going to be looking for them, but you'll see. You'll see me do things I've never done before because I feel like they'll be presented to me."

Heading into the fight, Adesanya says he feels 'unstoppable," and promises things will be 'different.'

"I don't know. I just feel really good. Like, it's different now," he said. "I just feel unstoppable. I really feel unstoppable because everything I've done this for, for this moment in my life. Everything I've done in this game has been for this moment in my life now. And now that it's here, it's like f*ck, I just feel I can't be f*cked with."