The beef was finally settled and there was even some respect shown between Israel Adesanya and Paulo Costa after their fight.
Adesanya silenced his critics as well as Costa and his camp by dominating him throughout their middleweight title headliner at UFC 253 on Saturday night.
Costa exhibited his fair share of gamesmanship during the fight, but was receiving plenty of leg kicks and not throwing enough strikes in the process. In the end, it proved deadly as Adesanya caught him with a head kick which rocked Costa before dropping him with a left hook soon after and earning the TKO win in the second round.
It was a devastating way for Costa to lose given all his trash talk towards Adesanya leading up to the fight as well as during the fight.
And while Adesanya certainly celebrated as much as he could following the win, he did go and embrace Costa as the two showed mutual respect to each other.
You can watch the moment below:
They don't need to be friends, but after sharing the Octagon Adesanya and Costa will respect each other
#UFC253 pic.twitter.com/vW6RXmrgA8
— UFC on BT Sport (@btsportufc) September 27, 2020
As for where Costa goes from here remains to be seen as it will be considerably hard for him to bounce back from this performance.
Adesanya, meanwhile, is only looking ahead as he is already targeting his next title defense against Jared Cannonier.
What did you make of Adesanya and Costa’s moment?