UFC champ Israel Adesanya: Marvin Vettori has to admit defeat, move on from loss

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Israel Adesanya retained his middleweight championship Saturday night at UFC 263 via unanimous decision over Marvin Vettori.

The victory didn’t come without some questions, though, as a debate ensued over whether the scoring during the main event bout was accurate. Adesanya appeared to be upset Vettori questioned the outcome of the fight.

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"I don’t know, because even at the end of the fight, I was like, ‘You can at least say I won that one.’ He’s like, ‘What? This one? This one?’ I was like, ‘Are you serious? I won that.’ I’m like, ‘Oh, no. We can’t. We can’t,’" Adesanya explained in the post-fight presser, via MMA Junkie.

"Eric Cartman mentality, man. You’ve got to believe your own bulls—t, sometimes. He said I believe my own hype? But wow, after that, who’s believing their own hype?"

Adesanya said Vettori should learn from the fight and continue to grow instead of questioning the result. "The Last Stylebender" said that’s what he did when he suffered his first professional loss in March against Jan Blachowicz.

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"I don’t know where this whole mentality comes from that, ‘Oh, you took a loss, and now you’re over.’ Nah, it’s part of life. Take it and let it improve you. My advice to him would be to look yourself in the mirror tonight – maybe not tonight. Give it a week. Let things settle down. Look at yourself in the mirror and be like, ‘Look, Israel is better than you. Israel is better than you. Izzy is way better than you. You couldn’t do s—t to him, but I’m going to get better from this,’" he added.

"I swear to you, his next fight will improve if he does the work right. But you’ve got to let it go. You’ve got to let it go."

Adesanya moved to 21-1 with the victory. He won the unified middleweight belt in October 2019 with a knockout of Robert Whittaker.

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Adesanya’s next opponent is still unclear. Whittaker is the No. 1-ranked fighter in the middleweight division ahead of Paulo Costa, Jared Cannonier and Derek Brunson.