The war of words between Israel Adesanya and Alex Pereira hasn’t stopped since both emerged victorious at UFC 276, but citing cartoons might not be enough to get into the Brazilian’s head.
After his latest defense of the UFC middleweight title, Adesanya proclaimed that Pereira was next and was “gonna get frozen like Elsa.” That led former UFC champion Jon Jones, who has traded barbs with Adesanya for years now, to wonder on Twitter: “How are you going to threaten a guy like Alex with glossy fingernails and a Frozen reference?”
Pereira had a similar reaction, but for other reasons.
Unlike Jones, the former two-division GLORY champion simply had no idea what Adesanya was talking about.
“I had a bit rough and difficult life,” Pereira said recently on The MMA Hour. “I started working in a tire shop when I was 12, so my childhood was cut off early because I had to work, so I didn’t watch many cartoons, movies and series. Sometimes you’ll ask me something and I won’t know how to answer and I’ll just say I didn’t watch it. Some people will say I’m an arrogant person, but my childhood was different. Most of my childhood was busy with work and trying to help provide to my family.
“Sometimes I see [Adesanya] doing cartoon stuff that, to me, doesn’t make any sense, because I don’t even know who Frozen is. I’m not being arrogant, I’m not being ignorant — I just didn’t even know up until that point who Frozen was. If you’re going to freeze me, I guess it’s related to ice? I don’t know. I wasn’t getting it.
To put it simply, after previously defeating Adesanya twice in the kickboxing ring, Pereira isn’t buying into what the champ is trying to sell the MMA community.
“First, I don’t speak English. And even if I did, the look on my face would be the same, because he said he would make [the Jared Cannonier] fight look easy and he didn’t,” Pereira said. “Goes there and it’s something else. I don’t [do that]. People already have expectations. I lay low, stay silent. ‘Alex, are you going to knock him out?’ ‘No, I just wanna do a good fight.’ I go there and knock him out and people be like, ‘Damn, awesome.’ People start to see who Alex Pereira is.
“This Frozen stuff, Naruto, Dragon Ball Z — to me, makes no sense whatsoever. People that understand and believe in the cartoon might be influenced, ‘Oh, he’s going to freeze him.’ He’ll freeze me like the cartoon. Is he? But, how? I don’t know how he’s going to freeze me. Is he putting me in the fridge? Is that it? I don’t know how this cartoon works.”
The UFC has yet to officially announce Pereira as Adesanya’s next contender, but the Brazilian is confident that the deal will be done soon.