A lot has been made of Israel Adesanya’s sexuality. The so called Stylebender has been known to paint and manicure his nails in addition to some stranger gestures he displays in the octagon.
One guy who was always able to market himself despite looking rather average and unremarkable is Ben Askren. Askren’s done it all from bragging about the dad bod to showing up to a presser in flipflops.
Regardless of the fact, in his brief stint in UFC his popularity skyrocketed and arguably birthed Jorge Masvidal’s star.
Askren recently questioned how many athletes approach the sport. He told Submission Radio:
“Some of them act in ways that are not conducive to their popularity and in moving along faster. What’s missing from the roster is interesting because I think there’s obviously some people to get it, but there are a whole bunch who maybe they don’t fully grasp the need.”
“And, you know, some people just don’t want to do it. Right? Don’t feel like it. Demetrious Johnson, he didn’t want to be that guy. I think “Sugar” Sean [O’Malley] is actually, he is a little bit of trying to copy Conor [McGregor] but I think he’s actually catching on a decent amount.”
“I think it’s you gotta be yourself. You got to be consistent. And sometimes I do struggle with like, why don’t certain people catch on? Because like Demetrious, for example, I always really enjoyed him. And he never really caught on big from a fan base perspective. And it was always puzzling to me.”
Askren is perplexed by some of the UFC competitors’ lack of genuineness. He is equally perplexed by the methods others employ to become successful.
Askren was made aware of middleweight champion Israel Adesanya and his veracity, and he confessed that he was perplexed by the manner he handles himself.
“But the one thing about Israel is like he would he caught on to a certain extent, like, for example, when his walkouts were tremendous, but then some of the things he said are it’s like, dude, what’s up with this dude?”
“I feel like he said kind of homoerotic things. Almost the way he humped Paulo Costa, for example, you know, people were like, Wait, why is he humping him? This is strange.”
Askren might have a point considering Adesanya’s insistence on comparing Pereira to a character in Frozen produced almost universal cringing and yet Adesanya went ahead and repeated it again during his octagon speech following the victory over Cannonier.
Not to mention Adesanya’s obsession with dogs – or dog like antics. In his UFC debut, Adesanya performed the fake pee celebration in the cage.
UFC was most displeased and had all but scrubbed the clip from the internet.
In an interview to Submission Radio, the now champion explained this ‘unusual’ celebration:
“I’m the new dog in the yard, and I just pissed all over the place,” Adesanya said.
“Came in the cage, pissed everywhere. I know dogs, when they’re dominant; when a dog walks into a dog park – head high, tail high, and just kinda pees all over the place to mark his territory. And let them know, ‘that’s my spot’. That’s how dogs communicate with body language, so I just pissed all over the place.”
He’s been more discrete since then but he still makes a dog like leg raising gesture during at least one of his UFC entrances.