Dan Hardy criticizes Israel Adesanya’s “crass” UFC 253 celebration

UFC commentator Dan Hardy was not impressed by Israel Adesanya’s post-fight celebration at Saturday’s UFC 253 card.

Adesanya, the UFC middleweight champion, took on ferocious Brazilian knockout artist Paulo Costa last Saturday night. After winning via second-round TKO, he briefly pretended to hump his vanquished foe.

Hardy, who is never shy to share his opinions, addressed Adesanya’s post-fight celebration at a scrum in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday.

“It was crass, is the truth,” Hardy said (via MMA Fighting) .”It was unnecessary and it was crass. It’s not good for the sport to be seeing those things, but at the same time we see a lot of the superstars they stand out, they create headlines because of the thing that they do. [Adesanya] was [mockingly] urinating on the octagon in his UFC debut. We shouldn’t be surprised by these things.

“There’s a lot of animosity between these guys and we do act out when we’re in these scenarios,” Hardy added. “When your adrenaline’s up, you’ve just won the fight, you’ve got all this energy. How many times do you see people doing terrible dances after fights and stuff? I’ve done it myself. You don’t know what you’re saying in interviews because your adrenaline’s going, you’re just ‘blllaaaaah!’ It happens. Sometimes it’s difficult to keep control of yourselves in those circumstances, but that’s when you see someone like that and you kind of think, well, it wasn’t in the spirit of martial arts and really that’s what we want to be seeing, to represent the sport as a whole. But ultimately, these people have to be their individual selves.”

While Hardy was a little put-off by Adesanya’s post-fight actions, you can only imagine how Costa himself felt when he saw footage of the incident. The Brazilian is now calling for a rematch with Adesanya in hopes of getting his revenge.

What do you think of this reaction from Dan Hardy?