Israel Adesanya has spoken out to clarify a few things he believes people have misunderstood about his unsuccessful title challenge against Dricus du Plessis in the sequence before he was taken down and submitted.
The action came fast and furious in the fourth round of the title clash, and at one point Adesanya stumbled to the mat, which the commentary team thought was due to him being dropped by a punch from du Plessis, but the former champ claims that wasn’t the case.
“Let me explain this because the commentary booth got it wrong, but again, it’s on the fly and it’s what you see in real-time,” Adesanya said on his YouTube channel. “I was moving and my right ankle rolled and I tripped as he was throwing.”
Once he was back upright most people believed that in a show of bravado, Adesanya then pointed to the canvas to signal that he wanted to throw down, just as Max Holloway had infamously done against Justin Gaethje in the final seconds of their BMF title clash earlier in the year.
However, Adesanya has said that this was another mis-read of the situation, and what he was actually doing was saying to DDP that he had slipped.
“To the untrained eye and in the moment it looked like, I think it was maybe Dom (Cruz) said ‘Oh that was a really bad shot he got hit with’ and it looked like I was rocked, then I like got up and circled out and I pointed at the ground looking at him and DC (Daniel Cormier) goes, ‘He’s pointing at the ground like Max Holloway like come here’, nope.
“What I said to him was like, I tripped, you didn’t rock me, I didn’t want him to think he rocked me with anything.”
Whichever way the gesture was interpreted, it seemed to be the catalyst for du Plessis to step up a gear, and looking back Adesanya acknowledges that it was a mistake on his part.
“In hindsight, I think he used that as a moment to capitalize and he just closed the distance on me straightaway, I lost focus in that moment,” Adesanya said.
Adesanya also went on to say that after watching the fight back he’s now eager to get back into the Octagon again.
“Enjoy me while I’m here man, enjoy me while I fight. As soon as I watched the fight I was like ‘F*** I can go again’, just instant. I was like ‘F*** I can go again I still feel good’, like literally I could fight this weekend, I don’t even have to make weight I can fight this weekend.
“We’ll see, I just want to get back to the gym, get training again and we’ll reset, regroup, and yeah, we’ll see,”
