“How would you even think about drinking a bottle of wine the night before a title fight?”
Marvin Vettori isn’t buying the excuse that Paulo Costa was hungover prior to his middleweight title bout against Israel Adesanya at UFC 253.
‘Borrachinha’ claims that he had drunk a full bottle of wine the night before the fight, but ‘The Italian Dream’ isn’t buying it.
After all, who drinks a bottle of wine the night before the biggest fight of their career?
“How would you even think about drinking a bottle of wine the night before a title fight?” Vettori told ESPN’s Brett Okamoto ahead of his fight against Costa at UFC Fight Night 196 (h/t Sportskeeda). “And again, even if you drink a bottle of wine, by the next night, I mean, don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing to do but you should be fine. Maybe not perfect but with the adrenaline that pumps in for a title fight with the lights and with this, like, how serious the situation that you’re going in, like, your mind will clear. Kind of like giving the fault to that is an excuse anyway.”
As for Vettori, the 28-year-old has no excuses for his own loss to ‘The Last Stylebender’ at UFC 263. He just flat-out denies it.
Vettori still feels he is the superior fighter to Adesanya despite losing to the reigning middleweight champion on two separate occasions.
“You know I just felt like [Adesanya] was very smart in there. With that being said, he wasn’t better. He wasn’t like more skilled. He didn’t have more cardio. He knew he was a champion and he didn’t really want to engage with me in a lot of exchanges in general.”
UFC Fight Night: Costa vs. Vettori takes place this Saturday, Oct. 23 at the UFC Apex Center in Las Vegas, Nevada.