A middleweight championship may be on the line, but for Dricus du Plessis and Israel Adesanya, their main event fight at UFC 305 is deeply personal.
More than 12 months of tension, exchanging of words and insults will culminate in one of the most anticipated fights of the year at RAC Arena on Sunday morning.
Adesanya (24-3) is looking to dethrone du Plessis in the South African’s first title defence and earn the middleweight championship for an unprecedented third time.
Both fighters have made it clear that the fight is more than about the belt as the bad blood between them grew since they went face-to-face in the Octagon after du Plessis (21-2) beat Robert Whittaker at UFC 290.
Much of the conjecture between the two has been about African heritage, with du Plessis claiming he is the first real champion from the continent because he lives and trains in South Africa where as the other spend most of their time overseas.
Adesanya has taken exception to this given his Nigerian heritage as well as championship reigns by Francis Ngannou (Cameroon) and Kamaru Usman (Nigeria) – the “Three African Kings”.
It has emotions running high as Adesanya steps fights for the first time since he lost the title to Sean Strickland in September.
The week culminated in a heated exchange at the press conference on Friday, where an emotional Adesanya broke down and promised to ruin du Plessis’ dreams.
Adesanya said the emotion, which sparked debate around the world, surprised him but he wouldn’t back down.
“I get the internet and their stupid comments. He said something about my servants, and that’s rich coming from someone who owned slaves back in the day,” Adesanya told the UFC weigh-in show.
“For me, if you don’t know about my story don’t speak on it but again, I let that out then, it was good for me to get that out then because it’s been a while and now I’m back to my form and I’m cold.”
Adesanya said the emotion could help a fighter if they knew how to use it right.
“I’m an emotional person but I’m also very emotionally intelligent unlike most people,” he said.
“I know when to use the fire to burn the power within.
“We’re less than 24 hours until we’re scrapping, and you will see then.”
Adesanya says his 11-month break helped him mentally, physically and spiritually refresh as he looks to add to his incredible mixed martial arts legacy.
“I got to remove myself from the game and find myself again,” Adesanya said.
“When I first fought here in Perth at UFC 221 I felt the love and yesterday I felt the love as well.
“I never needed the belt … I’ve been great before the belt, I was great with the belt and I’ll be great after the belt because I’m Israel Adesanya and I know who I am.”
Former UFC heavyweight and light heavyweight champion Daniel Cormier backed Adesanya to use his emotion having seen it before.
“Everybody’s making such a big deal about the response of Adesanya yesterday (Friday) and I get it, I understand but we’ve seen him emotional,” Cormier said.
“We’ve seen him fight with emotions. The time that stands out the most to me was against Paulo Costa. He hated Paulo Costa, he hated Paulo Costa’s team because they were all in his face and they were talking trash and they were messing with him the whole time. And he knocked him out.
“He’s done it time and time again. He’s been in these fights where he seems to be emotional, he doesn’t seem to be himself and when he goes out there and performs the only time it hasn’t happened was with Sean Strickland. But that was because Sean Strickland wasn’t expected, he wasn’t supposed to be there as the challenger.”
du Plessis said he didn’t plan to get such an emotional response from Adesanya as they prepare to finally fight.
“I won’t be bullied ever. When you have guys who act tough, want to bully … bullying is bad, bullying is not right, bullying is terrible and when a bully gets his own medicine that’s when he’ll stop bullying,” du Plessis said.
“I’m not a disrespectful person, I know that for a fact and I won’t be told otherwise. I’m always respectful if you’re respectful towards me and if you’re going to try to bully me, if you’re going to make threats on my life, any kind of threats towards me I won’t allow that.
“I believe emotion has no place in that octagon. Any emotion is one feeling too many in there. When we get in there it’s strictly business.”
du Plessis said after the best weight cut in years he was stepping into the octagon as a “monster”.
“I always plan these things out early because if you want to be champion of the world, I do all those things, I think about it as a contender mindset in terms of doing it better than ever every single time,” he said.
“When fight week came around, I don’t know what happened but I did my loading perfectly and I took a lot of sodium, salt and all of that but I was heavy. Heavier than I’ve ever been, I’m talking maybe about 10 pounds heavier than ever.
“Four weeks ago, everything was perfect but the weight just started coming off. I stuck to the plan, stuck to doing everything. It was definitely the best weight cut I’ve had in the last two or three years.
“The weight came off easily, I think getting into that octagon tomorrow I’m going to be a monster.”