International Fight Week didn’t just feature some history-making matchups last week. It also marked the unlikely coming together of two UFC greats, who in the past have expressed their dislike for one another. Israel Adesanya and Jon Jones squashed their beef.
Ahead of UFC 290, UFC middleweight champion Adesanya posted videos of himself and Jones playfully sparring and hanging out together, which shocked the MMA community due to the fact both men have exchanged verbal blows over the years.
For Adesayna, the beef is no more, and he’s happy to put it behind him and even teased a future link-up to train with the UFC heavyweight champion in the future.
“Yeah, [the beef is squashed],” Adesanya said on his YouTube channel. “We have understanding and common ground, we’re just competitors, bro. It’s like, why should I hate my brother?
“I went deep into my YouTube comments, and everyone was like, ‘That made me smile, I was smiling so hard watching this,’ and giving people that feeling watching us spar and play around, it was like, is this what world peace would feel like? Imagine world peace when people aren’t at war, people aren’t fighting, that’s what it felt like.
“We definitely will [train together]. It’s in the works, it will happen.”
Israel Adesanya on Training With Jon Jones
Newly crowned heavyweight champion Jones is set to make the first defence of his title at UFC 295 in November against Stipe Miocic. Meanwhile, Adesanya is rumoured to headline UFC 293 in September, which will take place in Sydney, Australia. His likely opponent will be Dricus Du Plessis, who just knocked out Robert Whittaker at UFC 290 earlier this month. The fight between Adesanya and Du Plessis already has a ton of heat behind it following both men’s recent words towards each other.
Although the Du Plessis rivalry stays hot in the middleweight champions’ minds, the same can’t be said about Jones. A rivalry Adesanya is glad to close the chapter on and believes the meeting’s timing was what stood out most.
Despite not revealing what the UFC stars discussed, Adesanya explained how the encountered happened:
“It’s no one’s business [what we talked about], that’s between me and him, but it definitely wasn’t a fake encounter,” Adesanya said. “I think it was divine intervention. I honestly do, because I feel like there’s so many times where it could’ve ended up differently.
The Encountered Explained
“I came back from the gym, I was tired, I was just going to stay in my room, and I was like, ‘No, let me go downstairs and have a look at the casino, let me go to a restaurant where [my friends] were.’ I decided to eat my Uber Eats in the VIP lobby, and then [I wanted] to go to the casino floor, decided to go to the bar. I get to the bar and I’m standing — and whenever I go somewhere, I never make eye contact with anyone — so I see a black guy, a white guy, there’s two [women], there’s a guy and a girl on the other side, and two bartenders.
“I’m standing there looking at my phone, and then I hear, ‘No way,’ and you just think it’s some fan or whatever, and turned around and it was like, ‘Oh, s***, what the f***?’ And instantly, we just dapped up. The energy was just… if you were around, you witnessed history because the energy was just palpable. And we just sat down and chopped it up, it was cool. We chopped it up about everything, and that’s need-to-know basis.”
Would you like to see the Jon Jones and Israel Adesanya train together? Let us know in the comments!
Featured image credits to Embed from Getty Images and Embed from Getty Images
