THE REAPER
For those of you out there who are still yet to have heard of a man named Robert Whittaker, that will almost certainly change one way or another by the time October 6 rolls around.
It’s on that date the Australian mixed martial arts superstar will defend his UFC middleweight championship belt against flamboyant New Zealander Israel Adesanya at Melbourne’s Marvel Stadium for what is being predicted will draw the biggest crowd in the UFC’s 26-year history.
Crowd figure aside, UFC 243 is also widely seen as being the most significant combat sports event in Australasian history – Whittaker hasn’t lost a fight in five and a half years, while the Nigerian-born Adesanya is undefeated in his MMA career (17-0).
But while Whittaker has now well and truly climbed the mountain to become the face of MMA in Australia – he is the first and only UFC champion this country has ever produced – it hasn’t been an easy road for him to get to this momentous juncture in his brilliant career.
As he reveals here to , Whittaker – who was born in New Zealand but grew up in the Sydney suburb of Menai and proudly has the five-star Southern Cross tattooed on his left pectoral – didn’t just have to contend with a
