Yoel Romero has fired back at Israel Adesanya.
Adesanya recently looked back on a low point in his career, which was the Romero fight, and put much of the blame on the now Bellator fighter. That fight served as the main event of UFC 248 and resulted in what many fans and analysts refer to as a snooze fest.
For his part, Romero believes he should not be blamed for their lackluster fight. Instead, he points to Adesanya and how many boring fights he has been in as of late.
“It left a lot to be desired, but let’s get things straight,” Romero said through a translator on The MMA Hour. “He called me [out], right? He’s like, ‘OK, nobody wants to face the beast. I want to face the beast. Not only do I want to face the beast, I want retire him.’ And then I got excited. I was like OK, this is going to be one hell of a fight. Let’s go. You want the beast? You’ll get the beast. So then I go up, I get ready for the fight, I’m ready to stand in the middle of the octagon right there — and I do, I stand up in the middle of the octagon ready to brawl, ready for blood to be shed and for fans to see a true all-out war. Right?
“But what happened? He starts to fight and he feels my power, and all of a sudden, what? He starts running away from me. I’m not going to start chasing after you. That’s not what I’m going to do,” Romero added. “The UFC was pampering him, was pampering Izzy, and basically I guess what they wanted was for me to go running after him. No, I’m not going to do that. If he was intimidated and didn’t want to exchange punches with me, that’s on him, not on me. All I did was stand up in there wanting to fight like a man and exchange blows. He didn’t want to do that, that’s on him. But it could have been way more than it was.”
Yoel Romero also points to his exciting fights against Paulo Costa and Robert Whittaker among others as proof that he normally entertains. With that, ‘The Soldier of God’ believes the blame should fall squarely on Izzy.
“Have you ever seen a boring Yoel Romero fight [aside from Adesanya] — yes or no?” Romero asked. “That’s my point. You’re bunching me up with Izzy, where, if you take Izzy away, now was there a boring Yoel Romero fight? … How many fights does Izzy have that are boring? You see? You see? The blame is not on Yoel Romero.”
The loss to Israel Adesanya at UFC 248 ended up serving as Yoel Romero’s final UFC fight as he and the promotion agreed to part ways. He ended up signing with Bellator and is set to face Melvin Manhoef on Friday in Dublin, Ireland as he looks to improve to 2-1 in Bellator.
What do you make of Yoel Romero’s comments?