UFC middleweight champion Israel Adesanya isn’t known for understatements. With Adesanya recently settling his multi-year beef with Jon Jones, Adesanya took to his YouTube channel to discuss his burgeoning friendship with a man that he once despised.
“Yeah, [the beef is squashed]. We have understanding and common ground, we’re just competitors, bro. It’s like, why should I hate my brother?
UFC Middleweight Champ Israel Adesanya Declares “World Peace” With Squashed Jon Jones Beef
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.”
Adesanya continued, explaining how he and Jones wound up talking, and how the picture of the pair smiling and hanging out made it to social media.
“It’s no one’s business [what we talked about], that’s between me and him, but it definitely wasn’t a fake encounter. 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.”
Adesanya and Jones were once on a collision course as Adesanya targeted Jones’ 205-pound title. Now, with Jon Jones atop the 265-pound heavyweight division, and Adesanya remaining at 185 pounds, a clash between the two seems unlikelier than ever.
