City Kickboxing (CKB) fighter Fau Vake, who died earlier this month, will be firmly in the thoughts of both middleweight champion Israel Adesanya and rising lightweight Brad Riddell when the duo step into the Octagon at UFC 263 next month.
Vake died on May 23 in an Auckland hospital, seven days after being the victim of an alleged one-punch attack on a night out in the New Zealand city. Four men have since been charged over the incident, with two facing common assault charges, one with counts of assaulting with intent to injure, and one with wounding with intent and injuring with intent.
Vake's passing has cut right to the heart the CKB crew, with Adesanya and lightweight teammate Dan Hooker having already taken to social media to express their grief at their good friend's apparent senseless death.
Adesanya said Vake was rarely without a smile and that, united by their grief at the 25-year-old's death, the entire gym continued to rally around each other.
"The only time you ever saw Fau with a mean [look] was when he was hard sparring, apart from that he was all smiles," Adesanya said to ESPN two weeks out from his middleweight title defense against Marvin Vettori. "He had a big smile, slanted eyes when he smiled because it was very expressive, and he had a very infections laugh.
"He was loved by everyone and we were blessed to engage with him. He was just a character in the gym and we all loved him."
Riddell, who fights American Drew Dober as part of the prelims for UFC 263, expressed both deep sadness and anger over Vake's death.
"We're heartbroken," Riddell told ESPN. "The light of a life, the waste of a young life, a father, a husband, a son; they've just lost their own father and now their mother has lost their youngest as well, just because some d---heads wanted to go around and punch someone on the streets and feel tough.
"So we're heartbroken and furious, bro, because these people need to be punished accordingly but unfortunately our laws don't allow them to be punished to the degree that they should be."
Both Adesanya and Riddell had fond memories of sparring with Vake, who Riddell believes was "easily" on his way to the UFC ranks, despite wearing a couple of heavy blows themselves.
The scale of CKB's loss is amplified by the fact that Vake's brothers also train at the Auckland gym, with Riddell saying his focus and that of his teammates had been giving the Vake family as much support and love as possible.
"He was one of four brothers that trained in our gym; the Vake brothers, the Vake family, just have like a special energy," Riddell said. "Fau was horrible to spar because he was such a good fighter, he trained a fair amount but for how good he was it didn't reflect how much he trained, he was just a natural born fighter. Every time he fought he was always smiling, he just always had a big grin on his face even when he was sparring.
"Actually the day before [the attack], we sparred and he punched me in the face so hard and it was only a warm-up, and I thought 'Jesus, I was taking it easy' and then he went on to Israel and I was sparring somebody else but I could hear it and it was a helluva sparring session. And then afterwards Israel was like 'that was a helluva warm-up, bro'. He was very talented."
Unfortunately for Adesanya, he has been through this before.
In the lead-up to his UFC debut in Perth in 2018, Adesanya's training partner Jamie van der Kuijl also died suddenly. Adesanya believes this tradgedy is something he can draw upon for the lead-up to his showdown with Vettori.
"I've already been through this with one of my teammates, Jamie, who passed away and I fought a week later," Adesanya said. "And it actually helped me be free because the worst has already happened, nothing worse can happen to me, a loss doesn't scare me, nothing.
"So it just helps me be free and helps me express myself, just like Fau would have wanted me to."
Riddell, too, has a job to do. Having seen his fight with Gregor Gillespie in March cancelled a week out because of an external breach of COVID-19 protocols, the Kiwi lightweight has gone more than eight months without a fight.
"I'm keen for a fight, I just needed one before this, with Gregor, that was already a long layoff for me and this now is even longer," Riddell said. "So I'm pretty keen to get back in there as I've just been training the entire time. I've done two fights camps, so I really need to get there and fight."
On the cusp of the top 15 in the lightweight standings, Riddell is also under no illusion as to what a win over Dober will do for his career and his desire to rise up arguably the most stacked division within the UFC.
"It's going to propel me into the rankings which is anybody's goal in the lightweight division," he told ESPN. "When you're ranked in the lightweight division, you're among a very elite group of men in the world, the division is stacked. And then you might feel like you're making progress but then just behind you there's like 20 more (great fighters).
"So you've just got to stake your way to the top, get that belt; getting that belt probably isn't the hardest part, retaining that belt is definitely the hardest part."
For Adesanya, UFC 263 represents a return to middleweight after his shot at the light heavyweight title ended in a unanimous decision loss to champion Jan Blachowicz. It is also a rematch with Vettori whom Adesanya defeated via split decision in 2018 in what was just his second fight in the UFC.
Adesanya doesn't see any improvements in Vettori's arsenal since then and says he won't make a similar mistake that denied him the unanimous points call last time around.
"The [last] fight, I think it was the third round where I made a mistake that I won't make this time; the first two rounds were just a beautiful display of the finer techniques of stand-up," Adesanya said. "I was doing things in that fight that people haven't done in the UFC before. But I'm not going to read too much into it, this is a completely new day and a completely new fight with the same result with me and my hand being raised."