UFC welterweight champion Kamaru Usman’s manager Ali Abdelaziz recently called for a superfight between his client and middleweight kingpin Israel Adesanya, and ‘The last Stylebender’ is far from happy about it.
““It bothered [City Kickboxing head coach] Eugene [Bareman] as well, and it bothered me,” Adesanya said on The MMA Hour. “I’m like, what the f*ck 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. I understand where he’s coming from. 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.
“This fight is not just going to happen just because, ‘Oh, it needs to happen, we need to see it.’ Nah, it’s bigger than us. The great nation of Africa, we’ve got three people who are champions right now and defending and ruling their divisions with iron black fists. This is legendary. They’re going to talk about this in history. Not sports history, they’re going to talk about this in sports history and just history in general. So why try and [ruin it]? We’re going to divide and conquer. So, Kamaru is his own person, Kamaru tells him when to f*ck off too.”
Usman appears to be on the same page as Adesanya and has already poured cold water on Abdelaziz’s suggestion so there is no beef between them, but the middleweight champ is more wary of his manager than ever.
“When I see Ali, he’s going to be cordial, he’s going to be nice. He’s never [not], there’s no static. He’s just doing his job. But that? Eugene knows how we feel about that,” Adesanya said.
“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. 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?”
