Former UFC middleweight champion Israel Adesanya has opened up on his yearlong layoff from the sport as he seeks to arrest a three-fight skid in his upcoming UFC Seattle showdown with rising 185-pound contender Joe Pyfer.

Adesanya, 36, was last seen in the cage in February of last year in a losing effort against Nassourdine Imavov — a bout which came after he experienced successive defeats to Sean Strickland and Dricus du Plessis.

Since then, Adesanya has been absent from competition but ahead of his return, he said the experience was unfamiliar but ultimately welcome. “A year without fighting. I’ve never done that before in this game,” Adesanya said, according to MMA Fighting. “So this is new territory, uncharted territory, and it’s exciting … I came back home, and I was just back into the regular flow of things. There was no inkling like, ‘I need to fight again. I need to fight soon.’ I was just like, nah, I’m going to chill for a bit. I wasn’t hurt from the fight itself. I just took the time to just do me.”

The former champion also revealed that he had been close to returning sooner, before an injury in training halted those plans. “I was going to fight last year, but then I got injured in the gym, and then that opportunity got taken away,” Adesanya said. “It was a short-notice fight, as well. And I’ve never done one of those, so that would have been exciting.”

Adesanya later clarified that the potential bout would have come against Reinier de Ridder on limited preparation time, explaining how close he came to accepting the matchup. “RDR. On five weeks’ notice, six weeks’ notice,” Adesanya explained. “I was already training, so I was getting ready for a fight. So it would have been like, ‘Right, I’ve never done this before. You’re fit. Hop in there.’ But then that moment got taken away from me. But that’s, in hindsight, the best thing. Even though I wasn’t happy with it then, it was the best thing.”

The layoff is now set to end when Adesanya headlines UFC Seattle against Pyfer, a bout that sees him enter the contest as a slight betting underdog.

Adesanya captured the UFC middleweight title in just his second year with the promotion and went on to defend it multiple times across a dominant championship run, establishing himself as one of the division’s most active and accomplished titleholders during that period.