Henry Cejudo is telling the UFC to ‘stop pushing’ middleweight champion Israel Adesanya.
Adesanya (23-1 MMA) is just fresh off a win against Jared Cannonier (15-6 MMA) at UFC 276 last Saturday night. The victory was via unanimous decision (49-46, 49-46, 50-45), resulting in ‘Izzy’ retaining his middleweight title.
‘The Last Stylebender’ has come under a lot of criticism following the fight. Apparently some UFC fans walked out of the arena before the start of the fifth and final round, others took to booing the fight. Fans also took to ‘Twitter’ using words like boring, unimpressive, lackluster describing the match-up between the two middleweight fighters.
At the post fight press conference, Adesanya spoke about the fans reaction to the fight saying:
“F**k them. They’ve been here since 3 PM. They’re all drunk. They don’t know what real fighting is or real finesse. The greats, they all get to this point. I’ve seen it when I was just a fan. I’m still a fan.”
During an appearance on ‘The Triple C & Schmo Show’, Cejudo shared his thoughts about Adesanya and his last fight saying (h/t Sportskeeda):
“It’s crazy when you come out to freaking, to The Undertaker (theme song), and you didn’t put on a performance, man, on Saturday night. It was lame, dude. You gotta start giving, main events are special, dude. If he’s not performing, UFC, stop pushing this dude. He’s a decision-maker.”
‘Triple C’ went on to say that the only fight where he believes Adesanya impressively defeated a top-tier opponent was his first encounter with Robert Whittaker (24-6 MMA) in 2019. ‘The Last Stylebender’ won that fight via a second-round KO.
Continuing, Henry Cejudo said:
“He hypes a lot, and he doesn’t deliver. He talks a lot, and he doesn’t deliver. It’s been like that with him for a minute now. And I think if you’re gonna call people out and do all this other stuff, finish them. Put a beating on people. Be spectacular. People look forward more to his entrance than his actual fight, and that’s a problem because what you do wanna be good at is when you fight.”
Do you agree with Henry Cejudo that Israel Adesanya needs to ‘be spectacular’ in the cage in order to win over the fans?
Share your thoughts in the comment section PENN Nation!