Midnight Mania! Personality-Bender Surprised Costa With ‘Gentle’ Encounter

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Welcome to Midnight Mania!

There’s a ton of hype around UFC 253’s main event, which pits slick kickboxer Israel Adesanya opposite hulking Brazilian Paulo Costa in a clash of undefeated fighters. The style match up guarantees fun, but another big aspect of all the excitement is the seemingly endless war of words between the two.

The number of times Adesanya has accused Costa of juicing is only equal to the amount of frequent occasions in which Costa calls his foe skinny. Seriously, the two have thrown different variations of the same couple insults at each other repeatedly for months now!

Perhaps that’s why Costa was so surprised when his first encounter on Fight Island with Adesanya went … smoothly!

“I don’t know what happened, he changed his personality a lot, his persona,” Costa explained. “The Adesanya that I saw on the video conference was a very disrespectful guy, he showed his fingers a lot to me. But when I met him upstairs, he was very kind, very gentle.

“I was waiting for a different kind of guy. He came and gave his hand to shake, asked how I feel, ‘how you feel, you feel good?’ He said, ‘yeah you looked very good, I like.’ What you like? But it’s okay, if he changes, okay.”

Seeing as “Stylebender” has competed over 100 times in professional combat sports, it’s perhaps not a shock that Adesanya can maintain his composure with an opponent backstage. Fortunately, neither man is likely to appear too “gentle” once the cage door shuts on Saturday night.

Shameless Self-Promotion

Fight week is here! I’m keeping the name list open until fight day, so for anyone reading who enjoys my writing and would like to support/enter the raffle, $5 or more puts your user/nick/real name on the banner. I have Venmo (AndyLRichardson), PayPal ([email protected]), and a GoFundMe.

HERE is the PPV stream link for anyone interested. As always. I will also do a write up on my experience ASAP after the bout.

Insomnia

Patrick Cummins with the must wholesome post in the history of this column:

Is Colby Covington’s shtick working? He might be on his way to becoming a real draw!

A slick reversal:

Mike Perry has a fight booked, but I mostly included this post because of the Avatar filter.

Watch great boxers shadowbox is always interesting, as they often have varied approaches.

Khamzat Chimaev intercepted Stephen Thompson’s first-ever callout. I’d watch it!

I can see why Weili Zhang is such a fan of Tony Ferguson — they both love strange workouts!

Slips, rips, and KO clips

A great right hand from an angle:

This is definitely the week for young Paulo Costa clips. He’s been aggressive since Day 1, but “Borrachinha” has come a long way technically!

Saenchai returned to action over the weekend!

Random Land

An intimidating sinkhole:

Midnight Music: One of the folks who donated to the banner recommended me the sole studio album of Mad Season, a certified grunge super group. Good stuff!

Sleep well Maniacs! More martial arts madness is always on the way.