After a racially charged encounter in the octagon on Saturday night, UFC president Dana White did his best to dodge a question about it during the post-fight news conference.
Following Dricus Du Plessis’ win over Robert Whittaker, UFC middleweight champion Israel Adesanya entered the cage to taunt the white South African, who is line for a title shot.
Adesanya, a Black fighter from Nigeria, repeated used the n-word while dressing down his future opponent.
“Let’s go n—a. What’s up, bitch? Let’s go, n—a,” a mocking Adesanya said. “Yeah, my African brother.”
“I’m African, but I ain’t no brother of yours, son,” Du Plessis retorted.
When a reporter asked White at the news conference about the racial undertones of the encounter and Adesanya’s choice to use the n-word, White seemed confused.
“What were the racial undertones?” White said.
Then, after being told that Adesanya had used the n-word several times, White responded “He’s Black … I could care less. This is the fight business. Israel Adesanya can say whatever he wants to say. Who gives a s***? Why, are people bitching about that? Of course they are.”
“Too f—ing bad.”
Adesanya, who won the middleweight title by defeating Alex Pereira in April, continued taunting Du Plessis on Twitter after their encounter.
“If you ain’t my brother, you ain’t African!!” Adesanya wrote. “I will show you where you’re from, n—a”
Du Plessis had some harsh words about Adesanya’s behavior during his news conference.
“He’s behaving like a clown in there. That’s not how a champion behaves, that’s not how a man behaves,” Du Plessis said. “He’s behaving like a child. Conduct yourself like a champion.”
The rivalry stems from quotes earlier this year in which Du Plessis criticized MMA stars Adesanya, Francis Ngannou and Kamaru – who have all held UFC gold – calling them fake Africans because they didn’t grow up or train in Africa, like he does.
“’I’m the African fighter in the UFC,” Du Plessis said. “Myself and Cameron (Saaiman, Du Plessis’ teammate), we breathe African air. We wake up in Africa every day. We train in Africa, we’re African born, we’re African raised. We still reside in Africa, we train out of Africa. That’s an African champion, and that’s who I’ll be.”
While Adesanya was born in Nigeria, he fights out of New Zealand.
A date has not been set for the title fight between Adesanya and Du Plessis, but early reports are that it could go down at UFC 293 in September.