One of the sadder sights on an otherwise brilliant night for the UFC on its visit to Seattle was of Niko Price trying to retire through the ceremony of Michael Chiesa’s own retirement. Price, who lasted just 63 seconds against Washington’s own Chiesa, could be seen cutting off the tape of his gloves, then laying them down in the center of the cage like an extra in a film, all while Daniel Cormier walked over the sacred act to talk to the man of the hour.

If that weren’t enough, the UFC then showed a montage of Chiesa’s career, spanning his beginnings as a boxcar sensation on "The Ultimate Fighter" all the way to the present-day graybeard before us. Price, a perennial B-side who had 21 fights in the UFC, obviously didn’t think the whole thing through. You don’t retire spontaneously when somebody advertises their last fight, as Chiesa did, on home soil.

By the time the celebration of Chiesa’s career was over, only Price’s gloves remained. It's the cruel nature of the game that some guys get trumpets on the way out, while some slink into the night without so much as a distant party horn.

The bigger wonder on Saturday night was whether two-time UFC champion Israel Adesanya, now into his own midnight showings, would walk away from the game if he were to lose against a comer like Joe Pyfer. Adesanya is one of the more celebrated ex-champions going, still with plenty of magnetism and pluck, yet to see him in the lead role on a Fight Night felt like a reluctant return to the ordinary.

Ordinary isn’t something we naturally use to describe Izzy; in that same cruel manner of the game, it’s something you fall to. Where would another loss drop him to next?

As you’d expect, the UFC turned down the house lights when Adesanya made his walk. The crowd in Seattle, nearly 18,000 partisans of "The Last Stylebender,” let up a roar. The hope was that the earthbound matchmaking might drag out a vintage Adesanya performance, and he tried to give it. Adesanya brought the fight to Pyfer, landing leg kicks from range and returning fire to Pyfer’s head, high hats to that sweet chin music he likes to play.

It wasn’t going badly for Izzy in what was his 77th professional combat mission, yet in the second round, after he’d eaten a couple of shots that seemed to galvanize a kind of inner-dog’s response, he decided caution wasn’t for him. He opted to stand with Pyfer. He was right in front of him, engaging in some roulette. It was as if he was as curious as the rest of us as to what was left, and besides, defiance was where he made his name.

“I said coming into this fight, it’s been 13 months,” Izzy explained after the fight, when pressed on the decision to brawl. “I wanted to feel like I’ve been in a fight, and he gave me just that.”

Izzy landed a couple of shots, snapping numbers in the wheelhouse that did recall a vintage form, but he couldn’t get out of the way of the punches coming at him in return. The big shots that landed hurt him. There was a left hand. A clean right. Then a takedown in which Pyfer went almost instantaneously into mount.

From there Pyfer slowly broke Adesanya the rest of the way down, first with the threat of a choke, and finally with a series of punches as Izzy laid flattened on his stomach. It was a hard visual to take in for Adesanya fans. The referee had no choice but to intervene. And just like that, it’s a four-fight losing streak for one of the UFC’s biggest recent star-like figures.

These twilight moments feel so ceremonial, especially when all around Adesanya were reminders of his past. There was Alex Pereira sitting cage-side, Izzy’s great rival for all those years dating back to GLORY Kickboxing. Pereira arrived to the UFC as the bane of Adesanya’s existence, but you could tell he was pulling for his nemesis. The profound connection of wars past. There was Eugene Bareman, of course, who helped construct Adesanya as a champion. And there was Yousri Belgaouri, who had lost to Adesanya twice in 2016 in the kickboxing ring, still glowing after having his biggest moment to date in beating Mansur Abdul-Malek on the prelims.

“I knew this was [Pyfer’s] biggest fight ever, I knew he was going to bring his best and he did,’ Adesanya told Cormier in the post-fight interview. “There was nothing surprising, I expected the best and he brought the best.”

Maybe what separates Adesanya is how he handles the cruel nature of the game. Even with the loss he seemed genuinely happy for Pyfer, who scored the biggest win of his career after what he described as a spiritual renaissance. Though it was skipped over in the commotion, Pyfer said he nearly took his life a couple of weeks back before finding God.

Instead, he kept going, and now with Adesanya’s scalp in his collection, he will be considered a contender in the middleweight division. None of it was lost on the former champion, who understands the dog-eat-dog nature of the thing he’s involved in.

As for Adesanya, who at 36 years old has now lost five of his past six fights? He intends to do what Pyfer did, which is press on.

“You keep going, again and again,” the former champ said. “And again, and again, and again. I’m not f***ing leaving. You’ll never stop me. I might get beaten, but I’ll always remain undefeated.”

Some guys were meant for the cruelest of games.