UFC 305: Is Israel Adesanya's emotional roller coaster on the way back up or down?

He laughed. He cried. He threatened violence and vowed to destroy a man’s dreams. And that was all in the span of about five minutes. Must be an Israel Adesanya fight week.

There really is no one else quite like this guy. The former UFC middleweight champion showed up at Friday’s news conference like an exposed nerve. All his emotions, anxieties and hopes seemed to sit right there on the surface as he went back and forth with current 185-pound champ Dricus du Plessis ahead of their main event title fight at UFC 305.

“Look, I am a f***ing human being,” Adesanya told du Plessis at Friday’s pre-fight event. “I am a man. I can cry and whoop your ass at the same time.”

He went on to point out that the first time he’d fought in Perth, where UFC 305 takes place on Sunday morning locally (airing on Saturday night in North America), he was making his UFC debut and trying to make his own dreams come true.

“Sunday, I’m going to f***ing kill your dreams, b****,” Adesanya said. “I’m going to f***ing kill your dreams.”

And there was something about the way he said it, somehow dripping with emotion and also entirely sincere. You could tell he meant it. You could also tell that he’ll genuinely enjoy it if things do work out that way in the cage. As if, more than just wanting to win for his own sake, what he really and truly wants is for du Plessis to lose and be plunged into sorrow.

This fight got personal right away, even before it was officially made. Adesanya took issue with du Plessis touting himself as a UFC champion who was born, lives, and has trained his entire career in Africa. From du Plessis’ perspective, it probably seemed like a harmless enough observation. He is from South Africa and, as he has stated on multiple occasions, takes a certain pride in crafting a championship career from there without ever having to relocate to one of the big gyms elsewhere in the world.

Still, it was all the fuel Adesanya needed. And to be honest, maybe he really does need some extra fuel at this point in his career.

When he lost his middleweight title to Sean Strickland in Sydney last year, something just seemed off about him right from the start. There was no urgency. Even when he was clearly losing, it was almost like he was sleepwalking through the fight, just trying to make it to the end.

This time, he seems to be running on pure emotional energy. Adesanya is mad, and it doesn’t seem like it’s entirely because of du Plessis.

Part of it might be that he can’t help but realize what a pivotal career turning point this one fight will almost certainly be. If he wins, he’ll have captured the UFC middleweight title for a third time — a feat that Anderson Silva certainly wasn’t able to accomplish in his mid-thirties. Another title reign would solidify his place as the dominant middleweight of this era, and probably one of the all-time great UFC champs in any division.

If he loses, though? That will be two straight defeats in UFC title fights. It will start to feel like the downward slide of a once-great career. The division will move on without him. More title shots will be hard to come by. People will start talking about his career in the past tense. We’ve seen how it goes.

That’s not to say a resurrection would become impossible, but it would get very unlikely. It’s already pretty unlikely, honestly. People who lose UFC titles don’t usually get them back even once, especially at 35.

But as we’ve been reminded on many occasions and in many different ways, Adesanya is not most people. He is many things — and some of those things are complicated and messy and strange — but he has never been typical.

Here he has a chance to ball up all that emotion and unleash it on du Plessis in a way that will carve his name indelibly into this sport’s history. One way or another, it seems like there are more tears still to come in Perth. Now it’s just a question of who’ll be the one shedding them.