UFC middleweight champion Israel Adesanya wants to prove a point. His public back-and-forth with Dricus Du Plessis, who is set to face Robert Whittaker at UFC 290. Du Plessis, from South Africa, has repeatedly called out Adesanya, who hails from Nigeria but calls New Zealand home, for his supposedly inadequate African-ness.
Adesanya appeared on The MMA Hour to declare that he’s praying for a Du Plessis win at UFC 290 just so he can get his hands on the man.
UFC Middleweight Champ Israel Adesanya PRAYING For Dricus Du Plessis To Beat Robert Whittaker
“I’m going to manifest [Du Plessis] winning this fight in the first round, and when he does, I’m going to be right there in the cage so he can turn around in September.
No bulls***, no ‘I’m hurt,’ this and that, nope. We’re going to fight in Sydney in September. Because Rob is Rob, whatever, I’ve already got a plan for Rob if it’s Rob. But I really, really, really hope it’s DDP, because I will show him who the f*** I am.
[…] It’s going to be first round, Dricus, f**** him up, somehow, by some magic, some juju. We’ll make it happen. It’s a hard ask, but again, Player 1, you can make things happen. Really, I’ll pray on this and make it happen.”
Adesanya also clarified the crux of his issue with Du Plessis. “I’ll say this again. I never questioned his ethnicity. I never said he’s not African, even though colonization, we don’t want to go over all that stuff.
He is in Africa, he was born in South Africa, and I never questioned that. But the fact that he was being a d***head, ‘We know who the real African is, I breathe African air,’ all that kind of stuff — how the f*** are you going to question me, Francis, and Kamaru’s blackness or African-ness?
Who the f*** are you? So I had to put that out there. I want to educate him. I’ll tell you one thing: You ever heard of ‘Ancestry and Me?’ [sic] If you do ‘Ancestry and Me’ [sic] on me, I know where the f*** I’m from. If you do it on him, he’ll find out where the f*** he’s from — and I’ll tell you, it won’t say South Africa.
It will tell you where the f*** he’s from, he’ll know his real heritage. I know who the f*** I am and I stand on that no matter where in the world I am.
You can take the boy out of Africa, but you can never take Africa out of the man. I know that and I never questioned him as an African, so who the f*** is he to question me as an African?”
