As he prepares to face UFC light heavyweight champion Jon Jones, Thiago Santos has boasted he relishes a chance of beating up Israel Adesanya.

Santos is not concerned about dropping down to the middleweight division but a fight against Adesanya will be a great opportunity to test his mettle against the  interim middleweight champion,

Santos confesses his encounters with Adesanya in the past had not particularly been pleasant, but he would not mind engaging the Nigeria-born puncher.

”I’d love to beat up Adesanya,” Santos told the media in Brazil recently (via MMA Fighting). “I don’t think he’s a nice guy. I would love to fight him. I don’t know, the times I’ve met him… I don’t know, we didn’t get along. The energy, I don’t know. I can’t explain. Same thing with (Michael) Bisping. I’m like that, I feel the person’s energy. I have nothing to say about him. If he’s a bad person or not, I don’t know. But we didn’t get along.”

Thiagos Santos is confident he will beat up Adesanya should he meet him in the cage. However, he is not thinking about that fight at the moment. His immediate concern is to hand a massive defeat to Jon Jones.

“As a fighter? He’s talented, he has a gift,” Santos said of Adesanya. “I can’t say a thing about that. But I don’t think he can take it against me. He can’t handle someone who hits him hard, who doesn’t fall for his games. His fight with Anderson [Silva], you can see he’s not that big of a deal.

”But that’s something to think about down the line, I can’t think about it now. I have to think about Jon Jones. I think that, if things go right against Jon Jones and I win, I might unify both [division’s] belts.”