Israel Adesanya might fight Kelvin Gastelum again, but never Marvin Vettori
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After Israel Adesanya’s recent interview, we can very well say that Adesanya vs Gastelum 2 is definitely on the cards. The “Last Stylebender” holds a lot of respect for the American middleweight fighter.
Adesanya is fresh off a recent victory over Brazilian, Paulo Costa and he is currently involved in a twitter tussle with Jon ‘Bones’ Jones. Paulo Costa felt that he needed an immediate rematch after his loss to Israel Adesanya, to which Adesanya replied saying he needs to take the loss and let it go, annotating Kelvin Gastelum’s and Marvin Vettori’s contrasting ways of handling defeat.
Speaking to MMAJunkie, Adesanya who is 20-0 in the UFC discussed about a possible rematch with Brazilian, Paulo Costa, bringing up how a lot of his previous opponents handled their defeat against him.
“He’ll never see me again” – Adesanya to Vettori
Contrasting, Kelvin Gastelum and Marvin Vettori, Adesanya spoke about how annoyed he was with Marvin Vettori. Marvin Vettori gave a real tough fight against Adesanya, when the two faced in a riveting bout back in April 2018. Many people believe that fight was the closest someone has ever come to defeat Adesanya.
But, Adesanya never seemed impressed with Marvin Vettori’s way of handling the defeat. He was quoted as saying, ” Let it go. I’ll give you a classic example: There’s two teammates that I fought. Two teammates is the Italian (Vettori), and then there’s Kelvin Gastelum. The Italian, he ran up on me in Vegas one time smiling and he was like, ‘What’s up? What are you doing here?’ And I said, ‘I’m here for my boy (Alexander) Volkanovski’s fight.’
Then I had to tell him just shush, ‘When I told you guys I would come train with you (after our fight), it wasn’t about you or because I lost. I was just saying that to your coach because he’s a legendary coach.’ All I said was, ‘If I’m ever in the area, I’ll pop in.’ He holds onto that because that’s he way of believing that, ‘Yes, he admitted that I beat him and he wants to train with us,’ like some Eric Kaufmann (expletive).”
He took further shots at Marvin saying, “But (Vettori) holds onto that because he knows, he knows deep down he’ll never see me again. He knows deep down he’ll never get a title shot. So that’s why he holds onto that as his own claim to victory when I smoked his ass in that fight. You might give him the third round, but I beat his ass easily in that fight, but he holds onto that.”
“He believes he’s going to get there” – Adesanya on Kelvin Gastelum
On the contrary, Adesanya heaped praise on Kelvin Gastelum with whom he had a cracker of a match, before coming up trumps. Speaking of Kelvin, he said, “Now, on the flip side, his teammate Kelvin Gastelum, who was ‘this close’ to winning in our famous UFC 236 title bout in Atlanta, was ‘this close.’ Then I dusted him and I widened the gap. All he does is give me respect. You know why? Because he believes he’s going to get there.
He believes he’s going to get there again. That’s the tale of two teammates, one who holds on to his loss to me, because he knows for a fact he’ll never, ever see me again. And one who just hushes in silence in steady works. Kelvin Gastelum. Because he knows he’ll see me again. That’s the two different approaches.”
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