Israel Adesanya reacts to squashing beef with Jon Jones, says plans to train together ‘in the works’


A chance meeting in Las Vegas during the UFC’s International Fight Week between champs Israel Adesanya and Jon Jones served as a game-changing scenario for the middleweight champion.

Prior to UFC 290, Adesanya posted videos of him and Jones hanging out together, and even playfully sparring one another after years of back-and-forth trash talk. According to Adesanya, any beef from his end is no more, and he even plans on training with the current heavyweight champion in the future.

“Yeah, [the beef is squashed],” Adesanya said on his YouTube channel. “We have understanding and common ground, we’re just competitors, bro. It’s like, why should I hate my brother?

“I went deep into my YouTube comments, and everyone was like, ‘That made me smile, I was smiling so hard watching this,’ and giving people that feeling watching us spar and play around, it was like, is this what world peace would feel like? Imagine world peace when people aren’t at war, people aren’t fighting, that’s what it felt like.

“We definitely will [train together]. It’s in the works, it will happen.”

Jones is currently slated to defend his newly won championship against Stipe Miocic in the main event of UFC 295 in November at Madison Square Garden. According to UFC President Dana White, the plan for Adesanya was to compete at UFC 293 in September, which serves as the promotion’s return to Sydney, Australia against an opponent yet to be announced. However, Dricus Du Plessis knocked out Robert Whittaker at UFC 290 earlier this month to set up a future clash between the rivals.

With the rivalry with Du Plessis going strong, the one with Jones is over after a long conversation between the two titleholders. What stood out more to “The Last Stylebender” was the timing of he and Jones coming together, and the moment they acknowledged each other being a powerful one.

“It’s no one’s business [what we talked about], that’s between me and him, but it definitely wasn’t a fake encounter,” Adesanya said. “I think it was divine intervention. I honestly do, because I feel like there’s so many times where it could’ve ended up differently.

“I came back from the gym, I was tired, I was just going to stay in my room, and I was like, ‘No, let me go downstairs and have a look at the casino, let me go to a restaurant where [my friends] were.’ I decided to eat my Uber Eats in the VIP lobby, and then [I wanted] to go to the casino floor, decided to go to the bar. I get to the bar and I’m standing — and whenever I go somewhere, I never make eye contact with anyone — so I see a black guy, a white guy, there’s two [women], there’s a guy and a girl on the other side, and two bartenders.

“I’m standing there looking at my phone, and then I hear, ‘No way,’ and you just think it’s some fan or whatever, and turned around and it was like, ‘Oh, s***, what the f***?’ And instantly, we just dapped up. The energy was just… if you were around, you witnessed history because the energy was just palpable. And we just sat down and chopped it up, it was cool. We chopped it up about everything, and that’s need-to-know basis.”



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