The context: Israel Adesanya and Marvin Vettori first met at UFC on Fox 29, where Vettori lost the fight via split decision, with two judges scoring the fight 29–28 for Adesanya, and the third judging it as 29–28 for Vettori (wikipedia). Hardly unanimous, but enough for Adesanya to take offense, as he insinuated the latter judge was both drunk and on heroin in his post fight interview. The Style Bender kicked off the weigh-in by lugging a pair of scissors out in his pocket, so he could snip the collar of his UFC t-shirt in order to rip it off.
It’s like running your old yellow-pages phone book through your Maytag’s wash cycle before tik-toking you ripping it in half. I just can’t support it. Adesanya painted his toenails for this fight, sparkles and all, so that he could “put glitter on his face…to make him look nice“. He finished the fight in the same manner he finished his bout in UFC 263, with brash exaggeration of The Italian Dream’s punches, pretending for a second that he could’ve possibly managed to injure him. Getting touched by Vettori is out of Adesanya’s scope of reality, as much as Michael Crabtree burning Richard Sherman was out of his.
And this is to say nothing of the sexual assault Israel laid on Vettori at the end of the 4th.
It’s a full cup, man. He is patting and cupping this man’s ass. If this was just a personal thing between Vettori and Adesanya, it’d be one thing. Let’s not forget this atrocity:
Send our condolences to Paulo Costa. UFC 263 was relatively boring. Vettori controlled a round and a half on the ground, to no avail. His lone submission attempt was sweat out, and Adesanya touched him more in every single round. It’s what you get when a wrestler fights an admittedly better kick-boxer and it goes the distance. It wasn’t a terrible fight, but it’s never a fun match up. For the record, Adesanya swore he’d have finished it if he had 2 more rounds after UFC on Fox 29, and he failed to do so on Saturday night. The fact is, none of Adesayna’s antics would matter, in fact I’d be in favor of them as good entertainment, if it weren’t for what happened when Joe Rogan stuck a mic in his face after the bout:
I’m asking for an ounce of self-awareness. It’s hard to say what Vettori’s words were in the end. If I’m Adesanya, I feel disrespected if I think I undoubtedly won something and someone else comes up to me and says “no, I think I won that”, sure. Maybe we just chalk all this up the UFC’s abysmally opaque rules for point and round scoring? No, Izzy cannot get out of his own way. Below is a picture of a clown, who wears it’s emotions painted to it’s face.
If you truly believe you’re the baddest boy in the world, talk is pretty cheap. But it’s also what you get to do, until someone else comes along. I absolutely don’t envy Israel’s position of having to decide how to act to keep his promotion up. But two things are true: 1) If you win, and win again, Dana White will put you on the card. 2) For the real ones, respect goes both ways, in everything. In this country, unfortunately, we have laid our bricks on respecting the winner and violently pissing on the loser in the name of championing the greatest. This type of mentality is lauded as the very essence of competition: we test our mettle to find out the better man. Not necessarily the man that has worked harder, come further, put in more hours, or did it “the right way”; these are all assumed to be true for the winner, because they’re the one that won. We must seek the greatness – the money – otherwise risk being labeled an oaf, a free-loader, a good-for-nothing, a failure. What other choice do we have? Fare-weather fans are the largest, loudest brood there is, and it’s a populist’s world we live in.
Good luck convincing someone it’s not the case. You tip your cap to the king, and if one is beneath you, it’s because they made worse decisions. They were given every opportunity not to, or as is more common, they didn’t create the opportunities for themselves that you did, because you’re way more self made. They are less than. They could’ve been you, or an even more winning winner, perhaps, but they messed up somewhere, and we should laugh at that. Adesanya wants you to respect him, not because he’s a martial artist who’s studied ju jitsu, not because he’s human, but because he’s the champion. The Style Bender was asked in his UFC 263 post fight press conference about whether or not Vettori had earned his respect. He responded like this:
You have to believe your own bullshit. Maybe he does have an ounce of self-awareness. Some believe it has to be earned, some believe it should be given unconditionally. Either way, a message to the champion: show respect to those beneath you when you’re on top, or no one will respect you when the time comes for you to leave the throne. Heroes get remembered, but legends never die. I’ll leave you with a passage from the Gracie Barra School of Ju Jitsu: “In the modern media where professional fighters promote their personas and upcoming matches with trash talking and provocative acts, the respect between opponents is sadly being eroded. Jiu-Jitsu students should avoid these smack talking antics and instead be respectful while competing hard. The respect for your opponents and training partners comes from recognizing that we need each other. In agreeing to compete and test each other, we are pushing each other to be better than we ever could be alone. Respect your training partners and opponents for overcoming their own fears and obstacles and practicing Jiu-Jitsu.” Show respect to your opponent. They are You in their eyes.
Helluva read. Israel do be pissing on people