Dan Hardy says Israel Adesanya’s UFC 253 post-fight celebration was ‘unnecessary’ and ‘crass’

Dan Hardy recently made comments regarding the post-fight celebration of UFC middleweight champion Israel Adesanya and called it ‘Unnecessary’.

Adesanya needed less than two rounds to dispose of Paulo Costa and successfully defend his middleweight title at UFC 253 on Saturday. As referee Jason Herzog stepped in to separate the fighters, Adesanya pretended to hump Costa from behind and then he walked over to Costa’s corner and directed an obscene gesture at Costa’s team.

Dan Hardy talks about Adesanya post-fight gestures

Many UFC fighters and fans didn’t appreciate this gesture from the champ towards his opponent.

The people who opposed these actions included UFC fighter turned commentator Dan Hardy, who talked about it. Speaking to the media at a scrum in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday, Hardy gave his take on the situation.

“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 that’s what we want to be seen, to represent the sport as a whole. But ultimately, these people have to be their selves.”

Unsurprisingly, Costa’s team has blasted Adesanya for the post-fight celebration, with Costa calling him “human trash” and Costa’s manager Wallid Ismail saying that Adesanya’s actions were “disgusting.”

The Costa camp is already campaigning for a rematch, which is why Hardy believes they’re unlikely to divulge too many details about what went wrong on Saturday. Though the rematch is not likely to take place anytime soon, Paulo Costa now has time to rethink his gameplan and what went wrong and come back stronger.

Israel Adesanya has now set his eyes on his next challenger which is most likely to be the winner between Jared Cannonier and former champ Robert Whittaker. Israel Adesanya is also having a back and forth twitter battler with former light heavyweight goat Jon Jones.

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