Israel Adesanya breaks silence on UFC 305 moment, denies Dricus du Plessis ever made him cry

Israel Adesanya and Dricus du Plessis previously threw down for the UFC middleweight strap at UFC 305, but it was the pre-fight moment when Adesanya was crying that generated a lot of conversation in the aftermath. This moment was touched upon when Adesanya recently sat down with Kamaru Usman and Henry Cejudo for their show, Pound 4 Pound podcast.

When asked by Cejudo about which prior opponent of Adesanya's that he particularly hated, Sean Strickland was a name that pretty quickly came to mind for 'The Last Stylebender.' When the former flyweight and bantamweight champ questioned if the former middleweight titleholder would put Dricus du Plessis up there in terms of opponents he had heated rivalries with, Israel Adesanya said:

"DDP, nah, that was different. Because again people were like oh, he made you cry. He didn't make me cry. Ok, I'll tell you what it is. I was talking about my mom. So what we used to do as a high schooler, I used to go with my dad to my mom's job because she was studying to be a nurse. So we'd go to the bank to clean at like four am, maybe four thirty."

"Get back home, get ready for school, and then go to school. So I was doing that, I mentioned that and I saw my mom in front and she kind of like welled up. When my mom welled up, I was just like, it hit me in the feels too. So it wasn't him. It was my mom and kind of seeing her get emotional got me emotional. That's just life."

Check out Adesanya explaining the crying situation with du Plessis below [57:37]:

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Israel Adesanya wants to avenge a prior loss in his next outing

The former two-time UFC middleweight champion wants to avenge a previous defeat to the man who ended his second reign, Sean Strickland.

The 35-year-old dropped his belt to Strickland at UFC 293 in a one-sided points loss. Israel Adesanya recently spoke with marathoner and motivational personality David Goggins about how illuminating that defeat was in terms of how he should slow down.

The Nigerian/New Zealand-based martial artist also spoke about how he used to get bullied a lot as a child, and Adesanya spoke to Goggins about how Strickland serves as an embodiment of that.