Fighters split on Adesanya's celebration: 'It's not good for the sport'
A trio of active and retired UFC fighters disagree on whether Israel Adesanya crossed the line by humping Paulo Costa at UFC 253.
Adesanya beat Costa via second-round TKO last weekend to retain his middleweight title. Immediately after the referee called off the fight, Adesanya performed a pelvic thrust on top of the challenger. Costa has since called the champion "human trash" for his actions.
Lightweight Paul Felder, strawweight Angela Hill, and former welterweight Dan Hardy told reporters on Tuesday about what they thought of Adesanya's postfight celebration.
"Listen, would I do it? No," said Felder, who served as the event's color commentator. "Is it a little disrespectful? Yeah. Was Costa probably disrespectful in some of the antics and stuff leading up to that fight? Yeah. So I think in that fight, it was kind of fair game, man. The winner of that was gonna showboat.
"If Costa knocked him out cold in that first round, you don't think he would've been running all over that cage doing something? ... I don't know if he would've dry-humped him, but he would've been done something."
Hardy, another UFC color commentator, said Adesanya's actions were uncalled for.
"It was unnecessary, and it was crass," Hardy said. "And 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 things that they do. (Adesanya) was urinating on the Octagon in his UFC debut, you know what I mean? We shouldn't be surprised by these things. There's a lot of animosity between these guys."
Hardy said it's important for fighters to be "their individual selves."
"We do act out when we're in these scenarios, when your adrenaline is up, you've just won the fight, you've got all this energy. ... Sometimes it's difficult to keep control of yourself in those circumstances," he added.
Hill said she found Adesanya's celebration to be amusing.
"I thought it was funny," she said. "Why be mad about that? He didn't - the dry humping, there wasn't any penetration. He didn't actually smack him with anything. It was miming. He was doing aggressive miming.
"I didn't think it was disrespectful - well, obviously it was disrespectful, but I didn't think it was out of line considering the buildup and everything," Hill added. "But yeah, I probably wouldn't have done it - actually I probably would have."