Earlier this year former UFC middleweight champion Israel Adesanya was caught on camera in the midst of a road rage incident while walking to his car in Auckland, New Zealand, and in a new interview he explains exactly what happened.
“Vibes was on, just chilling, and then this guy — I think because he saw my car — he doubled back and was like, ‘Izzy, one outs!’” Adesanya said on the Flagrant podcast. “In New Zealand that’s like, you and me, one on one, let’s go. I started laughing thinking like, ‘The f*ck?’ … I just kept on walking.
“The bit that pissed him off, he was at the green light, everyone was going around him, honking their horns like, ‘This f*cking guy,’ and I just grabbed my car door and [lifted it]. That pissed him off so he came in front of my car and I said, ‘Bro, I’m not going to whoop your ass for free.’ …
“He pulled up and tried to talk all this trash to me and at one point I even tried to defuse it because I was like, ‘Bro, I don’t know you.’ I said, ‘Bro, I fight for millions. I’m not going to knock your ass out for free.’ And he goes, ‘No, I fight for free. I fight for the streets and my pride.’ I was thinking, ‘You’re f*cking stupid.”
“…In the end, when I spat at him I was hoping, ‘Try something,’” Adesanya continued. “At the end you see me spit at him and he just looks down and I realized, you’re not going to do shit. … And I just realized if I drop this guy right now, they’re going to put me through the ringer. …
“If he spat back at me, then it’s on. But again, I’m glad I had a good day. I don’t like street fights. I don’t like confrontation, but if you bring the problem, I’m going to solve the problem.”
That being said, Adesanya claimed that if the troublemaker had squared up to his teammate Dan Hooker instead then things might have played out very differently.
“Do that to Dan Hooker. Dan’s a beast and Dan would probably act differently. Maybe not knock him out but put him to sleep, hang him out.”
