UFC icon Georges St-Pierre has hailed Israel Adesanya as a ‘perfect fighter’ following the Nigerian’s emphatic victory over Paulo Costa at UFC 253.
Adesanya has quickly become one of the biggest stars in mixed martial arts and currently boasts a perfect 20-0 record, with nine of those wins coming inside the octagon.
Having picked apart Costa to retain his middleweight title at the end of September, there are talks of a potential super fight with Jon Jones following the pair’s nasty war of words over Twitter in recent weeks.
And while St-Pierre didn’t make a prediction for that dream bout, his praise of Adesanya might just give away who the Canadian would be rooting for.
‘(Israel Adesanya’s) amazing. He’s a perfect fighter,’ St-Pierre told ESPN. ‘We’re in the entertainment business, and our job is to entertain the audience, and he’s doing it very, very well.’
St-Pierre isn’t the only UFC great to heap praise on Adesanya following his win at UFC 253.
Daniel Cormier has revealed that he would back Adesanya to beat Jones if they were to meet inside the octagon.
Cormier has called for UFC president Dana White to make the fight a reality following their bad-blooded feud on social media.
Chatting to MMA journalist Ariel Helwani, Cormier said: ‘It’s the time. Right now is the time.’
Helwani responded: “You can’t risk having Jon Jones lose his streak to some jabroni. You can’t. You lose it to Izzy, potentially, and now the torch has been passed.”
Cormier then said: “Wait, so you’re picking Izzy? You just said… so you’re picking Izzy too? You’re picking Izzy too? Because I’m picking Izzy! You’re picking Izzy too, I’m picking Izzy.”
Jones and Adesanya have long spoken about fighting each other, even though the former light-heavyweight champion vacated his belt and is preparing to make his debut two weight divisions above the Nigerian-born New Zealander.
Any potential fight between the two may have to be put on the back-burner as Jones continues to prepare to make the jump up to heavyweight, where a huge showdown with Stipe Miocic awaits.
