Alex Pereira suspects Israel Adesanya fought injured against Dricus du Plessis; Adesanya responds

Alex Pereira and Israel Adesanya will forever be linked to each other after four battles across two different sports, and “Poatan” used his YouTube channel to weigh-in on Adesanya’s failed attempt to regain the UFC middleweight championship.

Pereira said he was “very confident” in a win for Adesanya and wonders if the Nigerian fighter suffered an injury that prevented him from using what “Poatan” saw as a great weapon against someone like Du Plessis at UFC 305.

“Of course, I don’t know how Adesanya was,” Pereira said. “When we are there, we don’t talk about injuries, we don’t talk about problems. We are there and we want to fight, want to win. No excuses. Maybe Adesanya had an injury, I don’t know. You could see he kicked very little. Things I say, that inside kick of Adesanya is very good. Not everyone can do that, but he can do it very well.

“I knew it was a good weapon, and he didn’t continue doing that inside kick. Even Dricus said it bothered him, and also bothered me. I’ve said it before for the people who asked me. He didn’t continue to do it. When he is only throwing hands I think it’s easier for the opponent to protect themselves, or to get out. It was more boxing there. So it was easier for him.”

Adesanya reacted to Pereira’s comments on social media.

“Life goes on, I’ll be here cheering for him like I’ve always been saying,” Pereira continued. “This is honest. I respect him a lot, I like his fighting style. His story is marvelous. I mirror him a lot, he’s a guy that knows what he is doing, but this last fight just wasn’t for him. I hope he recovers, strengthens his mind, and comes back stronger.”

Pereira also weighed in on potentially returning to middleweight to face Du Plessis. The Brazilian, who won the 185-pound title before moving up to light heavyweight after losing to Adesanya, posted about it after the UFC 305 main event, and Du Plessis said on the post-fight press conference that he should stay at 205 pounds to avoid the weight cut, and offered to face him there in the future.

“In fighting, anything can happen, you lose or win, I think it’s a good fight for me,” Pereira said. “Me and Dricus. I see the fighting style, I would do a completely different fight than Israel did. Of course it’s what I imagine, but that can all change. I’m sure Israel imagined something else, and it was different. But I would train, focus on a fight like this to do my best and leave with a win.

“After I did that, Dricus talked about my weight. First of all, when I gave the ‘excuse’ that the weight messed me up, no one agreed. No one said anything. If I used that as an excuse, no one wanted to say, ‘yeah that’s right, weight was a problem for Alex’. No, everyone was quiet. But after I talked about going down one more time, the first thing Dricus said was that it was a problem when I fought Adesanya, when I got knocked out. I did this my whole life. For those who don’t know, I dropped down eight times, to 81kg, and always fighting at 85kg. I’ve hurt my body, getting older doing the same thing, cutting a lot [of weight], and seeing it wasn’t good for me. That last one was a warning to me, that I had to go up and that’s what I did.

“But if you guys remember, when I went up in weight, I said I could do this again, go down to middleweight, but I needed some time to recover. I think I was able to recover, I have four fights in this new weight class, where I took some time to rest. I think if I go down one more time I’ll do well. No excuses. I want to win. I could lose, okay, good I have that in mind, because I’ll go harder. … Seems like he is a bit scared. If it’s someone who really wants to fight me he would have said, ‘come, I’m waiting for you’. But no, he tried to make me scared so I wouldn’t do that, but he’s the one that’s scared.”