srael Adesanya had never met Sodiq Yusuff despite the fact that both fighters hail from Lagos, Nigeria. But Adesanya, who has lived in New Zealand since he was 11, had the good fortune of making the four-hour trip to Australia in December to watch Fight Night 142: Adelaide, where Yusuff would be making his UFC debut.

Adesanya sat ringside on the company’s dime, thanks to the middleweight’s four-fight win streak after joining the UFC in February 2018. And once Yusuff walked to the Octagon with the Nigerian flag wrapped around his head, Adesanya knew he shared a kinship with the featherweight fighter.

So when Yusuff won his debut via TKO two minutes and 14 seconds into the first round, Adesanya was ecstatic and jumped up to the cage to congratulate him. But their moment didn’t last long. Yusuff’s opponent, Suman Mokhtarian, was a native of Adelaide, and some of his coaches expected Adesanya to support them since they reside in the same part of the world.

“F— you!” Adesanya recalls them saying. “You’re f—ing cheering for him?!”
https://theundefeated.com/features/israel-adesanya-inside-the-strong-and-growing-bond-between-the-top-nigerian-fighters-in-ufc/


Adesanya said he was taken aback by their reaction but stood his ground. The exchange became heated enough that security intervened.

“[Sodiq] is from Nigeria, so we already shared a connection. I was cheering for him at ringside, and the opponent’s cornermen got mad at me and tried to step to me. I was like, what?” Adesanya said, still peeved by the memory. “Luckily security got them out of there, or I would’ve had to handle things myself.”

Adesanya, 30, and Yusuff, 26, finally met backstage at the event in Adelaide, speaking in their native Yoruba language.

“You always have belief in yourself, but then it’s a whole other feeling when you see someone that comes from your same background accomplish what you want to accomplish one day,” said Yusuff, who moved to Bladensburg, Maryland, when he was 9. “It just makes it feel that much closer.”

Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, Kamaru Usman sat in UFC president Dana White’s office in Las Vegas. “The Nigerian Nightmare,” who had just earned his ninth straight UFC win and entered negotiations for a future title shot in the welterweight division, was also watching Yusuff’s victory.

“I remember just telling Dana that we were coming for all the belts,” Usman said.

Less than a year later, Usman’s declaration to White seems more like a prophecy.

Usman (10-0) became the first African-born UFC champion in March by defeating Tyron Woodley for the welterweight title. Yusuff (3-0) earned a first-round TKO win in August at UFC 241 and is a rising featherweight contender. And Adesanya (6-0) has added the interim UFC middleweight championship to his mantel and could be UFC’s next big star.

“Every so often there’s always a legion of a certain part of the world that starts making a come-up in MMA,” said Adesanya, who will face middleweight champion Robert Whittaker in a unification fight on Saturday in the main event of UFC 243 (Saturday, 10 p.m. EDT, ESPN+ PPV). “I’m telling you, once the Nigerians pull up, once we start to pull up with numbers, it’s gonna be over for a lot of years in the MMA world.”

I love this. I love it.

Congratulations to Nigerians who are repping us well.

Ok