Israel Adesanya walked away from UFC 253 with his middleweight title intact, but the fighter also left with a lot of controversy.
One of the controversies surrounding Adesanya has to do with some accusations that he used steroids before the fight, which the middleweight champion denies.
“No, I haven’t (taken steroids),” Adesanya said on Ariel Helwani’s MMA Show (via Danny Segura of MMA Junkie). “I’m not one of those people who need a crutch that when it gets taken away you feel weak, you feel inadequate. You see with when (the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency) came through, you saw a lot of bodies change and a lot of people didn’t feel good enough without their magic supplements. But yeah – not me. Skills pay the bills.”
The reason the steroid accusations came up is that Adesanya’s right and left pectoral muscles looked different on fight night. Adesanya does admit that there were problems surrounding his right pectoral muscle before UFC 253.
“I didn’t want to speak on it until I knew what it was because it’s been on me the last eight weeks, and it was growing,” Adesanya said. “I was like, ‘This is quite sore.’ And even my girl told me to go to the doctor, but I was like, ‘No I want to get this fight over with first.’ I don’t know what it is, but from what I read about (gynecomastia), it happens to both your boobs and this is just one.”
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