Du Plessis refused to fight me – Adesanya

Former UFC middleweight champion Israel Adesanya has said that current champ Dricus Du Plessis turned down a possible fight against him to headline UFC 300, SUNDAY PUNCH reports.

One of the fights UFC boss Dana White desprately wanted was the UFC middleweight title fightbetween Du Plessis and Adesanya.

He attempted to make it happen by any means necessary and the Nigerian-born fighter was reportedly ready to fight and The Last Stylebender himself was the one who confirmed that Du Plessis’ team were the ones who didn’t want to fight so soon.

Du Plessis just won the UFC middleweight title in January but he sustained some major injuries and it’s been less than two months since that happened. Fighters who take a lot of damage tend to need at least five months to recover.

The last time Adesanya fought was back in September, when he surprisingly lost the belt he had just recovered against Alex Pereira to Strickland. It’s been almost six months since Adesanya has been inside an octagon. As many of you recall, he said he would take years away to rest but he seemingly is ready to return right now. Recently, ‘Izzy’ sat down with comedian Theo Von for his podcast to talk about his career and other aspects of his personal life when he told Theo Von about this rejection from Du Plessis.

Adesanya wasn’t taunting the South African champion and he seemed like he understood how complicated fighting too soon after an all out war can be.

During the Theo Von podcast episode, Adesanya was aked about headlining UFC 300 and he answered saying, “There’s some things that were meant to happen. They summoned me, I’m sure this is out there now, but they summoned me for (UFC) 300 and I was like ‘yep, let’s roll.’

“But their side didn’t want it. They didn’t want it. They just fought (Sean) Strickland so maybe he had a little bit of niggly injuries and stuff but we’ve all got niggles and what not. I’ve fought injured for the last how many fights, that’s why I took time off just to let my body heal. It has healed and I’m sure there will be more injuries, it just happens through training. Like what we do for work, it’s constantly something.”

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