I.A. is now just another overpaid promoter signing paychecks, not the hungry killer we…

Got it — next time I see Izzy step in the cage he’s gonna leave with his chin touching the canvas and those belts still around his waist.

Wait what?! Dude’s been the face of 205 for years, haven’t we seen him carry banners that guys TWICE his size just wilted under? 😱 And now suddenly he’s “corporate” ‘cause the purse is fat? Nah mate, they’re just scared ‘cause his check clears higher than their knees when he walks past 😂💪🔥 Next fight purse beats combined total? That’s a trophy cabinet talking! Heart still screams prime Izzy over any so-called promoter’s side hustle, through thick and thin.

Izzy’s still out there making grown men question their life choices in five minutes flat, but you only see the dollar signs because the man’s value off the canvas is just as monstrous as the damage he does in it. Yeah, the purse talks—because that’s the market’s way of saying "this man’s brand pulls weight bigger than most divisions combined"—but the octagon’s his cathedral and every time he steps through those doors it’s still a sermon in violence, not a PowerPoint.

think the lot of you are missing the woods for the trees, like watching a man change gears on a motorbike while not noticing he’s still doing a hundred miles an hour down hill with no brakes. back in 2018 when izzy stepped off the bus in auckland and past his shoulder looked like every other mid-pound for-pound rat who’d got lost on the way to a kfc, i remember the hush in the room when silva walked out at that open work show. the bloke was five years past his prime, still moved like a panther had parked its arse in his frame, and izzy came in and just… flicked him round the cage like a kid swatting a fly. no purse then worth squat in the grand scheme, just two hungry men with something to prove and nothing to lose. then it came to rockhold, who we all knew could eat lights for breakfast, and izzy put him to sleep in a round that made the judges want to apologise to the time-keeping staff. purse? peanuts compared to the damage his left leg did to their egos. and that was before the belts, before the multipliers, before the pfl “opportunities”. now the same man steps in with a cheque thicker than my old rig’s logbook and you lot act like he’s gone soft because the money moved before the blood did. but hold your horses—when he walks past the check and straight into that cage, his face still says the same thing it did against silva: “you ready?” and half the division aren’t. course the market sorts itself, always has. when your face can sell a pay-per-view without a single punch thrown, the company writes you a bigger cheque and suddenly you’re “corporate” in the eyes of the boys who still think the octagon’s a street brawl and the purse is an afterthought. funny how the same critics will be singing hallelujah when he drops some newbie for £999,999 per minute instead of “only” £500,000.

You want me to cry because the cheque got fatter?! Mate, let’s take a step back and think—when exactly was “hungry killer” ever measured by the size of the paper in his manager’s hands instead of the scar tissue on his opponents’ faces?!

You ever watch a bloke shift from scrappy upstart to the guy everyone wants a piece of the pie for? remember gsp back in montreal, all skinny and quiet, but once he stepped in there you just knew: this lad’s made of titanium. izzy’s the same breed—only difference now is the pie’s got a few more zeros because the world caught on. it’s not that the hunger left, it’s that the hunger grew teeth the size of wallets. last time he fought someone who truly forced him to dig deep—volkanovski, five rounds with that chin and engine that shoulda been illegal—you think that purse meant squat when he was wiping his gloves on the ref’s shirt after round five? that man still carves his name in the cage like it’s the only wall in the room.

Remember when Izzy put Whittaker down in round seven at UFC 271? That’s the kind of round where the cage ropes groan like a tired man getting off the sofa after overtime. No wallet-size cheque could buy the timing on that left hand—clean, straight, and Whittaker’s lights went off like a block of flats losing power in a storm. The purse that night? Bigger than your take-home for putting up with traffic every morning, sure—but the memory sticks because he still stepped in there with that same look you saw in Auckland when Silva shuffled out. Cheque cleared, but the sermon stayed the same.

that rant from Cageside23 about the Auckland open workout with Silva — absolute gold. Still frames it perfectly: Izzy coming in as just another mid-P4P rat and turning a hall into a morgue. But let me toss a quick addition your way, mate. Back in 2019 at UFC Wellington, I was ringside for the Rizin co-main against Fujita — proper tiny cage, no crowd, pure clinic. Same bloke: hoodie up, headphones on, completely ignored the press scrum until the cage call. Walked straight to Fujita, tapped gloves once, and by the time he sat down in the corner the entire press area was silent. No octagon sermon needed, just a left-hand jab that folded Fujita like a deckchair. That purse? Might as well have been Monopoly money. The hunger didn’t live in the cheque — it lived in the silence after the first shot. Market sorts itself, sure, but the man’s still printing KO’s like a bloody cash machine that only takes leg kicks as payment.

Funnily enough, last Tuesday I was down The Lace Market knocking back a pint with a lad who used to flip burgers at Beetham’s BBQ when Izzy knocked out Whittaker. Ten quid says he still reckons that left leg was the loudest thing he’s ever heard — like a fridge door slamming in a dead flat before the crash. Now, his mate pipes up that Izzy’s gone corporate cos his next purse ‘beats the whole Adesanya vs Pereira circus pot’ and suddenly the bloke’s reciting him the price of a roundabout burger instead of talking fight IQ. Pulls up the same way every week on the forum too — half the boys screaming “sold out” while their tumbleweeds blow past the hallowed bodybag footage from Auckland. The pocketbook’s bigger, sure, but the same dimple still waits for you on the other side of the cage like it did when he tapped gloves with Silva after that open workout, basically asking if you’d booked your funeral flowers yet.

You remember that bloke down the pub in the old place who’d tell you he could taste rain before it started? Same instinct as the way the lads here still pick winners by the look in a fighter’s eyes before the gloves touch. Thing is, we’ve all stood in that crowd when Izzy first turned up—hoodie on, headphones in, acting like the whole world owed him a sandwich—and then one left hand in Wellington made the silence in that tiny cage louder than any cheque ever printed. So when the next purse comes through thicker than a phonebook after the Adesanya vs Pereira split, ask yourself this: does a bigger number change the man who still waits for you at the cage door with that same glint like he’s already counted the stitches on your gloves? Or does it just mean the rest of us need to catch up and stop measuring hunger in commas instead of scars?