Israel Adesanya has a lot of fun with Paulo Costa’s last excuse for his defeat at UFC 253.
Costa (13-1 MMA, 5-1 UFC), who fell short in his attempt to take the middleweight title of Adesanya (20-0 MMA, 9-0 UFC) with a second round defeat by technical knockout in September, recently revealed in a YouTube video in which he drank wine the night before entering the octagon to help him sleep.
That decision backfired, said Costa, because he got into the fight with a “hangover” and says he struggled with both drinking and lack of adequate sleep. Adesanya found this quite comical, he told MMA Junkie on Monday.
“This is really funny,” Adesanya told MMA Junkie. “There are certain things that I did before some of my struggles in the past where I learned my mistakes, but I went in and did my job. Some people were not made for this lifestyle. “
For his part, Adesanya says he was somewhat puzzled by why Costa left and made that statement now, after more than five months since the fight.
Costa pushed hard for a rematch after UFC 253. The Brazilian said he would “kill” Adesanya if they ran back and is not happy with the way the champion rubbed the result in the face since the close fight.
Adesanya said that this attitude will not be beneficial for Costa’s career. “The Eraser” is scheduled to fight Robert Whittaker in the UFC Fight Night main event on April 17, and a victory would put him back in the conversation for yet another title shot.
If he wants a second fight to be different, however, Adesanya said Costa needs to correct himself mentally and physically.
“I’ll tell you something: the best thing to do in his position is to accept the fact that he lost,” said Adesanya. “He had his ass screamed. The fact that he keeps trying to invent all these excuses will only make him worse in the long run. He’s making excuses because his ego can’t handle the fact that ‘The Skinny Clown’ screamed his ass and then hit him twice.
“Just swallow your ego. You got your ass screamed. Go back to the drawing board and reevaluate your entire game. You cannot just rest on this because if you do – this is my advice – you will never go far in life or in this game. “
Whether or not a rematch is in the future remains to be seen. For now, however, Adesanya’s focus is on something bigger than Costa.
“The Last Stylebender” will try to add the light heavyweight title to his resume alongside the middleweight belt by challenging Jan Blachowicz (27-8 MMA, 10-5 UFC) in the main event of UFC 259, which takes place on Saturday, at UFC Apex in Las Vegas and airs on pay-per-view after the preliminaries on ESPN and the first preliminaries on ESPN +.