Israel Adesanya is fine with letting the fans worry about his rivalry with Jon Jones.
Much has been made of Adesanya and Jones trading verbal shots over the years, with only one weight class previously separating them. But with Jones now at heavyweight and Adesanya seeking challengers for his middleweight title, it appears that the ship has sailed on them ever actually fighting.
Adesanya was taken aback during a recent appearance on the Impaulsive podcast when he was told about some complimentary words from Jones, to which he responded by saying, “Real recognizes real” in a seeming show of mutual respect. He elaborated on that statement on The MMA Hour this past Monday.
“It’s not at odds,” Adesanya said when asked if people were making too much of his response. “I’ve never had a conversation with this guy ever, so how am I going to have a friendship, like a ‘buddy-dom’ with someone I’ve never talked to? Yeah, we’ve beefed, I don’t like him, he doesn’t like me, but we respect each other’s skills and I was a fan before I was even in the UFC.
“He was the youngest UFC champion, did great things, I followed his career, then he called me out and I was like, ‘The f***? What did I do to you?’ Same thing, I went back at him, we went back for a little bit on Twitter, which was fun, but the story’s not over.”
Even if there’s more to be settled, Adesanya doesn’t sound like he expects it happen in the octagon. During Adesanya’s first run with the UFC middleweight title, there was much talk of him moving up to 205 pounds to challenge Jones for the UFC light heavyweight title, but the matchup was never close to coming to fruition. Adesanya eventually challenged for the light heavyweight belt, falling short against Jan Blachowicz at UFC 259.
In all likelihood, Adesanya and Jones never square off, which is just fine with “The Last Stylebender.”
“Anderson Silva-GSP?” Adesanya said. “Jon Jones-Anderson Silva? … Sometimes, we don’t always get what we want, but those fights I felt like would have been some of the biggest fights in history. We don’t always get what we want, but we get what we get. Right now, where we’re at, it’s just another one of those ones like me and Alex [Pereira]. It’s like, ugh, we’re over. I think you guys are more hard about it than we are. [Jones and I] are kind of just like, ‘OK.’”
Adesanya’s manager Ash Belcastro said on The MMA Hour that he was more optimistic that a fight between Adesanya and Jones is still possible.
“I think we’ll always entertain that fight,” Belcastro said. “I think that’s a good payday for Israel and something that I think both athletes can sell well, that the UFC can make a little money off of as well. So you never know what’s around the corner. This game moves so fast, it’s something that in the future, whether it happens or not, we’ll just leave it. The door’s always open.”
Oddly, Jones has been tied more closely to a crossover bout with heavyweight boxing champion Tyson Fury than any outside-of-the-box UFC matchups. Jones and Fury have publicly challenged each other to fight, with Jones recently saying that he is willing to test his boxing skills against Fury’s.
Adesanya doesn’t have a prediction for that fight in the unlikely event that it happens, but he likes Fury’s chances of being competitive in the cage.
“If anyone can do it, [Fury] can,” Adesanya said, recalling a recent run-in with Fury. “I even felt like, ‘Jump in the cage.’ Look, all this s*** about, ‘You’ve got to come to boxing, you’ve got to come to boxing.’ I don’t know why everyone does that. Even [Tony] Bellew was like, ‘Don’t f*** around with these MMA guys. We all know what fighting is.’ Even as a kickboxer, I wouldn’t have just jumped into the UFC without learning other martial arts to learn how to counteract or beat them at their own game, so let’s not be silly here. In a fight, we know what would happen if, example, I fought some big-time boxer, we understand in a fight.
“Tyson, he’s got good skills. The gloves are different. If he learns how to sprawl, he could do some damage.”
