Marvin Vettori was not impressed by Israel Adesanya to begin with, so you can imagine how “The Italian Dream” felt after watching “The Last Stylebender” lose a unanimous decision to reigning light heavyweight champion Jan Blachowicz earlier this year in Las Vegas.
Blame the middleweight champ’s “useless” jiu jitsu.
“With Jan, the last time (Adesanya) got taken down, he kind of quit,” Vettori told Real Quick with Mike Swick (transcribed by Drake Riggs). “He was just laying there. Adesanya, when it comes to the middle of the cage, when he’s taken down in the middle of the cage and he doesn’t have the cage, he’s pretty useless on the floor, to be honest. Kevin Holland is a better jiu-jitsu player than Adesanya for sure. Even when Adesanya said, and I made fun of it because even after the Blachowicz fight he was like, ‘I was trying to go for deep half.’”
Adesanya gave up a crucial takedown in round five that may have cost him the fight.
“I’m like, what the fuck are you talking about?” Vettori continued. “There was no attempt to go to deep half. That shows you don’t know what deep half is, and I know exactly what deep half is because I’ve been training with [Fabricio] Werdum. I actually used deep half in my [Karl] Roberson fight. I used it successfully. His game and the way he fights, because he scrambles hard the moment you try to take him down next to the cage, but yeah definitely when he’s down, he’s pretty useless, to be honest.”
It’s up to Vettori to prove his UFC on FOX 29 loss to “The Last Stylebender” should have been scored in his favor when they rematch in the UFC 263 pay-per-view (PPV) main event on June 12 inside the promotion’s APEX facility in Las Vegas.
For much more on that upcoming event click here.