Nigerian mixed martial arts (MMA) fighter, Israel Asdesanya (The Last Style Bender) may not have the American crowd on his side for this weekend’s Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) title defence against Cuba’s Yoel Romero, following his ‘tasteless joke’ about the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City, USA, megasportsarena.com gathered.
Adesanya is gunning for his first middleweight title defence on Saturday, into the early hours of Sunday in Las Vegas, USA, but the crowd is bound to be partisan against him, as whiplash of criticism is trailing him for daring to say he will make his UFC 248 opponent ‘crumble like the Twin Towers.’
The 30-year-old Nigerian (18-0 MMA, 7-0 UFC) made the comments during a news conference a week to the fight, as the countdown and hype got to a head, towards his top of the bill headliner fight against Romero (13-2 MMA, 9-3 UFC), a veteran that could not get the support of the American audience, despite hailing from one of their antagonistic communist nations.
It will take a lot of fence mending for Adesanya and his camp to curry favour heading into the fight, as he immediately came under fire for the remark in reference to the 9-11 attack that killed over 3,000 people.
Although some pacifists pointed out that Adesanya, who made his professional debut in 2012, does not have a history of making controversial remarks such as these, one of his rivals, Paulo Costo (13-0 MMA, 5-0 UFC) had the harshest criticism in the hours following those comments.
All the critics also seemed to overlook the fact that the New Zealand raised Adesanya apologized on his Instagram story and on Twitter, after sharing a comment from a fan, with a promise that he will not say such sensitive things again, while also pleading for a second chance.
Adesanya pleaded thus: “The comment in the last story sums up how I feel about the situation. I never made a joke about people dying or made light of the tragic event that was 9/11. I was simply rambling and my brain worked faster than my mouth in a moment to (choose) the wrong euphemism.
“You speak on the mic enough times and you’re bound to miss the mark with some bars. I did on this one and for that I’m sorry. I’ll be more careful in (the) future with my words.”
