Alex Pereira Claims Adesanya Fought Injured; Adesanya Responds

Alex Pereira and Israel Adesanya will forever be linked after four battles across two different sports. Naturally, Pereira used his YouTube channel to weigh in on Adesanya’s failed attempt to regain the UFC middleweight championship.

Pereira said he was “very confident” that Adesanya would beat Dricus du Plessis at UFC 305. He wonders if the Nigeria-born fighter suffered an injury that prevented him from using what “Poatan” saw as a great weapon against someone like the champ.

“Of course, I don’t know how Adesanya was,” Pereira said. “When we are there, we don’t talk about injuries, we don’t talk about problems. We are there and we want to fight, want to win. No excuses.”

Maybe Adesanya had an injury; I don’t know. You could see he kicked very little. Things I say, that inside kick of Adesanya is very good. Not everyone can do that, but he can do it very well.

“I knew it was a good weapon, and he didn’t continue doing that inside kick. Even Dricus said it bothered him, and also bothered me.”

“He didn’t continue to do it. When he is only throwing hands, I think it’s easier for the opponent to protect themselves or to get out. It was more boxing there, so it was easier for [du Plessis].”

Adesanya reacted to Pereira’s comments on social media.

It’s weird how this guy knows me…it’s like we’ve spent hours studying each other’s moves and fought multiple times or sumn’. I mean that. https://t.co/Up7U8DyT2Q

— Israel Adesanya (@stylebender)

🤷‍♂️
I just said “he knows my style.”
Go touch some grass please…

— Israel Adesanya (@stylebender)

“Life goes on, I’ll be here cheering for him like I’ve always been saying,” Pereira continued. “This is honest. I respect him a lot, I like his fighting style. His story is marvelous.”

I mirror him a lot; he’s a guy that knows what he is doing. But this last fight just wasn’t for him. I hope he recovers, strengthens his mind, and comes back stronger.”

Pereira also weighed in on potentially returning to middleweight to face du Plessis. The Brazilian, who won UFC’s 185-pound title before moving up to light heavyweight after losing to Adesanya, posted about it after the UFC 305 main event.

Du Plessis responded at the post-fight press conference, stating that Pereira should stay at 205 pounds to avoid the weight cut. He offered to face him there in the future.

“In fighting, anything can happen; you lose or win. I think it’s a good fight for me,” Pereira said.

“Me and Dricus, I see the fighting style. I would do a completely different fight than Israel did.”

Of course, it’s what I imagine, but that can all change. I’m sure Israel imagined something else and it was different.”

But I would train, focus on a fight like this to do my best and leave with a win.

“After I did that, Dricus talked about my weight.”

First of all, when I gave the ‘excuse’ that the weight messed me up, no one agreed. No one said anything.