Reigning UFC middleweight champion Israel Adesanya and current UFC welterweight champion Kamaru Usman have no desire to fight one another, which is why Usman was willing to skip right over the 185-pound weight class in an attempt to join the coveted “champ-champ” club.
That’s why “The Last Stylebender” can’t seem to wrap his head around these recent comments from Usman’s manager, Ali Abdelaziz, who wants “The Nigerian Nightmare” to put aside his friendship with Adesanya in order to facilitate a cross-division super fight that could generate millions of dollars.
“It bothered [coach] Eugene [Bareman] and it bothered me,” Adesanya told The MMA Hour. “I’m like, what the fuck is this peanut head talking about? Because I’ve gone on record saying I don’t want this fight. We don’t want this fight, because it’s bigger than us. I understand where he’s coming from, don’t get me wrong. But you can make tens of millions other ways. There’s so many other fights you can make. But he said he’s being selfish — I’m like, fair enough. And also, he just needs to give his fighters their phone back, like Kamaru has said, because sometimes he gets on there and starts to talk all this rubbish.”
Usman (20-1) is expected to make his next welterweight title defense against surging division contender Leon Edwards at some point over the next few months. As for Adesanya (21-1), he outlasted a very game Robert Whittaker in their UFC 271 headliner earlier this month Houston, Texas.
“The way peanut head did it was just disgusting, and Eugene kind of expressed how we do it in our gym and the code that we have,” Adesanya continued. “And like I said, me and Kamaru definitely feel the same way. What’s the point? This is bigger than us. Kids are going to look at us generations from now and be like, ‘Those guys from Nigeria, they did that. They ruled. They ruled this whole thing until they left, and the left on top.’ Same with Francis as well. So yeah, I don’t know why he [did that]. And he always comes up to me, ‘Oh, my brother. My African brother,’ this and that. So I’m like, why? If you’re supposed to be a ‘brother, brother,’ why are you trying to be selfish now and look at the dollar signs?”
I guess Adesanya doesn’t need to look at dollar signs after scoring this monster contract.