Dan Hardy believes Adesanya’s celebration was “unnecessary”, “crass”

The main event at UFC 253 gave us many things to discuss about Israel Adesanya and Paulo Costa. The bad blood that had boiling for over than an year came to a conclusion with Adesanya’s pure masterclass observed at the fight.

It took Adesanya just two rounds to defeat the Brazilian and defend his title. However, talks about his post-fight celebration were also raised. At the end of the fight when referee Jason Herzog intervened, Adesanya pretended to hump or “rawdog” Costa from behind and then went to his corner to make obscure gestures towards his coach.

Former UFC fighter Dan Hardy spoke in an interview in Abu Dhabi about the situation-

Dan Hardy on the incident-

“It was crass, is the truth,” Hardy said .”It was unnecessary and it was crass. It’s not good for the sport to be seeing those things, but at the same time we see a lot of the superstars they stand out, they create headlines because of the thing that they do. [Adesanya] was urinating on the octagon in his UFC debut. We shouldn’t be surprised by these things.

“There’s a lot of animosity between these guys and we do act out when we’re in these scenarios. When your adrenaline’s up, you’ve just won the fight, you’ve got all this energy. How many times do you see people doing terrible dances after fights and stuff? I’ve done it myself. You don’t know what you’re saying in interviews because your adrenaline’s going, you’re just ‘blllaaaaah!’ It happens. Sometimes it’s difficult to keep control of yourselves in those circumstances, but that’s when you see someone like that and you kind of think, well, it wasn’t in the spirit of martial arts and really that’s what we want to be seeing, to represent the sport as a whole. But ultimately, these people have to be their individual selves.”

Unnecessary or not, Adesanya proved to the world at UFC 253 why he is the undisputed UFC Middleweight Champion of the world.

Also Read: Lightweight contender Paul Felder wants to welcome Michael Chandler to the UFC octagon