Israel Adesanya happy to follow Jon Jones to heavyweight

UFC middleweight champion Israel Adesanya and former light heavyweight champ Jon Jones have been building interest in a superfight by bickering on Twitter for the past year and a half. Jones has relinquished his belt, and says he intends to move up to heavyweight, but at the recent virtual media day, Adesanya said he’d move up too.

One hundred percent. It doesn’t change my plans, said Adesanya. My plan is still going forward as planned. So, yeah, same thing.

Look how long it took him to move up to heavyweight, finally. Like I said, he was expecting me to do it straight away, when I hadn’t even defended my belt yet. I’ve defended my belt twice now, I want to defend it a few more times and then do what I set out to do. But, yeah, the pot calling the kettle black on his part. Go put some f***ing muscle on your chopstick legs and go fight Francis Ngannou and watch him break you. I hope he doesn’t, though. Maybe he does. Who knows?

The 19-0 Adesanya defends his title vs. 13-0 Paulo Costa at UFC 253 on 26 September.

What I was expecting from my last fight is going to happen this fight,” said Adesanya. “Bro, you can’t understand. In my story, you just can’t just have it going good and going great in the story. You need a dip, you need a valley when things go to s***, and that was me after the last fight, the performance that Yoel Romero brought. He was lackluster. I’ve never been in a boring fight in my life. I had all this criticism, justly or unjustly. That was a dip, and now this is the rise back.

What better antagonist than this guy, who was undefeated, a KO artist, he looks the way he does, ballooned up? It’s like David and Goliath. I f*** this guy up, and it’s spectacular. As they say: Someone’s 0 has got to go. It’s a beautifully set up story. You couldn’t write this s*** You could, but it’s real.

I think a performance of the year, shutout of the year, shutdown of the year maybe. Fight of the Year? I’ve already had that in my back pocket, but if it happens again – I just don’t think it’s going to happen just because of the situation. You have to be smart enough to put it together. This guy gasses after the first round. We’ve got five rounds. Look at me in all my fights in the fifth round, in the fourth round, the third round, the later rounds – I’m always fresh. So, yeah, precision is going to be the key in this fight. Precision, skill, and just taking him out one by one.