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Sport Nation
“Your words mean something”: An open letter to UFC star Israel Adesanya
Brad Lewis • July 13th, 2023 11:07 am
Gather around, whānau - every Thursday I will be tackling a current event happening in sport. This is 'As I See It'...
Israel Adesanya is one of my favourite sports people.
I love how unapologetically authentic he is - he doesn’t care what people think of him - he doesn’t care who and why you hate or love him, he’s just Izzy.
The first time I met Izzy, I asked him a very vanilla question and he flat out told me I had ten minutes for the interview and he’d be wasting two minutes of our time together if he answered - I agreed!
Note to self: ask better questions, I wrote.
Izzy has always been friendly to me and several of my colleagues - always happy to chat and share a joke or two if we crossed paths at his central Auckland gym during media sessions.
Unfortunately, I previously worked for an organisation that wasn’t too fussed about the feats Izzy accomplished inside the cage - instead they were focused on what he would say on social media, his thoughts on the legalisation of marijuana and his outspoken opinion of the Labour government and their COVID lockdown protocols.
Other New Zealand media followed suit, and thus the seeds were sown of a rift between Izzy and 99 percent of New Zealand’s sport media. Unfortunate, but at the same time I get it - Adesanya didn’t need us.
But alas, I still cheered for him - and with zero impartiality wrote about my thoughts on his fights, his career, and his life outside the cage.
I defended him - it’s Izzy being Izzy - you don’t have to like him.
But then came Sunday at UFC 290 - Izzy stepped inside the cage to confront his latest foe, South African juggernaut Dricus Du Plessis, who he will fight in two months at Sydney's Qudos Bank Arena.
Their feud has crossed racial lines thanks mostly to an extremely naive comment from Du Plessis several months ago when he told reporters he was Africa’s only true UFC fighter and would be Africa’s first born and bred world champion - this at a time when the UFC had two champions born in Nigeria and one in Cameroon.
Adesanya and his African brothers, Kamaru Usman and Francis Ngannou, were rightly pissed off, but Izzy took the lead and publicly went on the offensive - I’m not gonna get into the details but it’s gotten ugly.
So, we flash forward to Sunday and Izzy is nose-to-nose with Du Plessis - I’m waiting in anticipation of an awesome verbal showdown.
At that moment, my eight-year-old son wandered into the living room, then this happened...
My plea to Izzy - as much as you don’t want to be - you are a role model.
You are a magnificent fighter that some young Kiwis, young Nigerians, and young kids all over the world look up to. You are one of the greatest champions in UFC history, and you are a proud black African man.
And Dricus is naive to his own roots - the history of violent racism and apartheid that blocked South Africa off from the sporting world for two decades.
But please, understand the effect that word has on a younger audience - a global audience. Your words mean something because of who you are.
If I said that word right now, I’d be fired in the morning.
My son asked me what it meant - I had no idea what to say to him - just not for him to ever repeat it, "a bad word" is all I could muster.
I am a fan of Israel Adesanya - the fighter and the person - and I know he couldn't care less about the 500 words-odd words I’ve just written, but if you somehow hear or read this - understand your appeal, understand your fan base and global reach. You are a true global superstar.
People care what you say and they take note. I’ve read the social media comments over the last few days - Adesanya lost a lot of fans in the space of a minute.
And while I'm not one of them - as I see it - Israel, take your anger out on this man when the octagon door closes in Sydney, but hold back on the racial slurs.
It’s ugly and paints you in the light of a person that I don’t believe you are.
