UFC Hall of Famer Daniel Cormier believes the stakes are very high for UFC middleweight champion Israel Adesanya ahead of his fight with Dricus Du Plessis.
Du Plessis (20-2 MMA, 6-0 UFC) emerged as the No. 1 contender when he stopped former champion Robert Whittaker by second-round TKO this past Saturday at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
In attendance was middleweight champion Adesanya, who hoped Du Plessis would get his hand raised after the South African fighter made some comments that bothered him. Du Plessis claimed that he would be the first true African champion if he were to realize his goal since he still trains and resides in Africa. Nigeria-born Adesanya, who lives in New Zealand, didn’t take well to Du Plessis’ comments and confronted him in the octagon, lobbing numerous N-words at him while getting in his face.
Cormier turned to Joe Rogan for more knowledge and understands why Adesanya is so upset.
“Rogan sat back down, because Joe just has all this knowledge,” Cormier said on his YouTube channel. “I go, ‘What was that all about?’ He goes, ‘Well, Dricus is Dutch, and the Dutch colonists took over Africa and apartheid,’ and he just went into this whole thing. He pulls up his phone and gives me a quick breakdown. I screen grab it and sent it to my group message.
“After they read it, they’re like, as I get more and more into it, I can see how Izzy was so upset because reality was it just looked like there was no direction behind it. The use of the (N-word) I did not like, but when you really dig into it, telling three African champions that they’re not African, you can see where those guys would get upset.”
Cormier is not a fan of where this feud could potentially go, but he understands the magnitude of this fight. Adesanya had heat with prior opponents such as Alex Pereira, Paulo Costa, and Marvin Vettori, but Cormier sees Du Plessis as a must-win situation.
“It’s an ugly, ugly thing, but it is going to make for a crazy fight that we don’t have to wait long for,” Cormier said. “It’s going to happen in Australia in nine weeks. Dricus took no damage, so they’re going to fight in September. It literally is going to happen very quickly and, because of that, we get to get some resolution to it. The reality is if it’s rooted in all this historical stuff that it is, there really won’t be resolution to it.
“Because then Izzy will still have the same types of feelings he has toward how his people were done by the people that colonized Africa. It will never be a resolution. If Izzy can win, it’ll feel great for him. But if he loses, boy, could you imagine if he loses to Dricus? That’s the one guy he doesn’t want to lose to. You can’t lose to him. You’re in a situation now where you cannot lose.”
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