Juju Recognizes Juju

10/04/2024 08:38 AM

Do you believe in magic? Adesanya does, which is why he recognizes it in how Pereira powers through his opponents in the cage so impressively.

Add Israel Adesanya to the growing list of fighters convinced that Alex Pereira is using some sort of magic to keep winning his fights.

Jiri Prochazka was the first to voice that opinion at UFC 303, going so far as to challenge "Poatan" to a spell-free rematch.

"This is my challenge to him — to be without some other things," Prochazka said. "Let the higher power be there in the cage to see who's the best in the world, in the performance. In the pure performance."

Confidence wise, it's never great to hear a fighter suggest supernatural reasons their opponent is better than them. Prochazka got rinsed by Pereira just 13 seconds into the second round of that bout. "Poatan" then declared he was a 'man of God' who would never engage in witchcraft.

But Israel Adesanya has no problem admitting he engages in spiritual warfare, and he believes Pereira does too.

"You know what Jiri said about the whole juju thing?" he said on the latest episode of The Joe Rogan Experience. "That's real. That's real."

"The guy beat me in the biggest arena on the planet, Madison Square Garden, the same way as the last time he beat me in Brazil in his hometown. I was beating his ass, had him hurt at the end of the first round, all that s—. Took him down. And then he gets me in the last round."

"It's his spirit, it's whatever his ancestors or his people that are praying for him," Adesanya continued. "Because I've got prayer warriors as well. My mum and dad be fasting, and they have people in the spirit realm praying for me."

"But, like, the way he carries himself. Something about him just, he knows how to recover well. So, I just knew I could get him, I could get him. And then after that he knocked me out in the biggest arena in the world. I'm just like, 'Let's do that s— again, Dana.'"

Maybe Pereira is just that damn good? A lot of these casual accusations of witchcraft come from fighters who just can't believe a guy with 13 MMA fights could be this good. They see him donning the war paint of his Pataxó tribe at weigh-ins, they see videos of him bringing the belt back to his ancestral village, and they start to concoct superstitious excuses for how he accomplished what they couldn't.

That's a pretty powerful magic spell they're casting on themselves, more powerful than anything a shaman or prayer warrior could send out into the world.

As Ben Askren noted after Prochazka's loss, "If he's worrying about witchcraft, this is going to be over quick. He's going to get knocked out. And that's what happened. I hate the fact he was thinking about this kind of stuff. If you think about that type of stuff, it's probably over for you."