Photo by Josh Hedges/Zuffa LLC
“That fight will end in the first round if it happens, but you’ve got to get some wins first, bro.”
Israel Adesanya can’t help but laugh at Chris Weidman’s latest callout on social media.
Weidman, the former UFC middleweight champion, said a fight versus Adesanya is “easy money” and touted ‘The Last Stylebender’ as “just another [Anderson] Silva without the black belt in jitsu.”
Fresh of his TKO win over Paulo Costa at UFC 253, Adesanya responded to ‘All-American’ with the following statement.
“It was a bit weird for me, but I already have him figured out,” the reigning UFC middleweight champion told MMA Junkie’s Farah Hannoun and Mike Bohn in a recent interview. “I have it figured out right down to how I’m going to take him out. Let him bring his double leg, let him bring his single leg, let him try and force me to the fence. He’s not going to strike with me. Come strike with me – one thing that he has going good for him is, one thing he said before he knocked out Anderson Silva, at the weigh-ins, he looked at him dead in the eyes and said, ‘I’m not scared of you. I’m not scared of you.’ He said that over and over to him; I remember that.”
“I told him, ‘I look forward to fighting you one day,’ because I actually thought he would be at the top for a while, but he unfortunately hasn’t been doing well lately,” Adesanya added. “Not that he can’t come back. Look at Jan Blachowicz; he came back and now he’s the champion. But yeah, I’m just saying, I’ve studied these mother(expletives), they think this is a (expletive) game.
“Weidman is already done. That fight will end in the first round if it happens, but you’ve got to get some wins first, bro. A few wins first, yeah.”
Weidman, 36, is clearly in no position for a title shot. The Serra-Longo product is 2-4 in his last six fights and suffered a string of knockout losses from 2015-2019. Weidman last fought earlier this year at UFC Fight Night 174, where he earned a unanimous decision win over Omari Akhmedov — his first victory since 2017.