What it’s Like When Israel Adesanya Visits Nigeria

What is it about Nigerians? Why are Nigerians so clever? All these internet scams, like when you hear about internet scams, it's Nigerians, right? Nigerians come to America. They're one of the most successful groups of immigrants in all the fucking countries, 100, plus whatever countries. Nigerians murder it when they come to America. There's something about there's a work ethic, but there's also a cleverness to Nigerians. I've said it before, I'm the runt of my people brain wise and body wise. Because when I went back recently, honestly, man, you see people who are just bricklaying and they're jacked, they're ripped, some of them, and they don't maybe have the best nutrition, but there's something about the genetics of our people. It's a warrior race. And I don't say that likely, I'm just being honest. It's different. And I think also the culture, because I was doing algebra in school when I was like seven, and then I went to, I went to when I first moved to New Zealand, Form 1. I had to do Form 1 in three different countries. So I started Form 1, I don't know what you guys have here. Form 1, sound like first grade? I don't know how it is, but pretty much I was 10 years old and I moved to Ghana for a little bit and I had to repeat it again. Then I moved to New Zealand and I had to repeat it again, because they said, no, he's too young, he can't be doing that. But thing is, I wasn't even the smartest, I was the bottom three in my class. So I wasn't the smartest of the bunch. In Nigeria? In Nigeria. So when I came to New Zealand, Form 1, remember my first thing in school, they had a test, like early workout or something, one of the first weeks in school, and we had to do Times Table and I knew the song in my head, so I just like, finished Miss and all the kids are like, whoa. And I'm just like, the fuck? And then they all thought I was this fucking savant, this genius. And then they started asking me questions like, do you brush your teeth? I'm like, yes, I do. Do you brush your teeth? Dude, back home, do you ride on lions? And I went home and I was like, mom, these fucking kids are dumb, all these white kids are stupid. I didn't know, I didn't understand. I just thought like, I do regular shit, they didn't understand me, so yeah, my people are different man, honestly. And you've seen it, and I'm telling you man, especially right now, what I want to do in Nigeria, I really, I want to introduce them, take the football soccer ball out of their hands and show them some gloves. We have some great boxes, we have this thing called Dambe, which is Nigerian wrestling, kind of like the Senegalese type wrestling, some beasts. But Dambe, they wrap rope around one hand, just one hand, and they just pull with the other hand, and they wrestle and they throw strikes. But also they have like some juju, some black magic, all that kind of stuff. They sprinkle that in there. I got mine as well at 3am. But literally, I can't wait to show them, because when I went back, I was trying to just chill, low key, sneak into the country, but my dad said it can't happen, they're watching you, everyone knows who you are. From the airport, all the area boys, ah Israel, this one here, oh my god, ah, can I take a photo? Police officers showing what's up, showing love, crooked police officers, some of them. But they're showing what's up, showing love. And like, I didn't realize, like they stay up till 4am to watch me and Kamaru fight. They're staying up. And I've always said, I wanted to be the guy, like what Pacquiao was to the Philippines, you know, the way when he fights, the whole country shuts down, crime drops, everything. I wanted to be like, I feel like after this now, it's going to keep blowing up. And I'm going to go back next year. I'm going to go back next year. I'm going to, I hope, I hope they see the possibilities, because I'm telling you, man, the countries that, I mean, it was Brazil at first in the early stages of MMA, then Japan, then America, then you know, like it always goes back and forth. And then, you know, the Oceania people right now, we're doing some work. And I'm telling you, once, not just Nigerians, once the Africans, once they start stepping in, it's going to be like when 50 Cent dropped in the club and then killed the whole game for a while. Like honestly, I'm telling you, like they're going to run the game for a long time, for a long time. And I'm, I'm happy to be a guy that's kind of like paving the way. It's crazy though. What was it like going back there, being the champ, going back there? It was beautiful. Like, just seeing my people, it's different when you're in Vegas and, oh my God, dude, I'm your biggest fan. I'm going to get you. Right. Right. A kid just in shock that you're even standing there, like just in shock that you're in his presence. And for me, I don't see myself as a style man. I'm Israel. I did something at the end of the day, but when they're looking at you and just like, you know, and this kid, I remember like he's on my Instagram, he was kicking a bag and I just showed him, I tweaked him. I just told him this to pivot on the foot, stand on the toes and turn the hip. Literally within a minute, he improved his kick like that. And I got it on my Instagram somewhere, but man, I was really impressed. And that was just a little snippet of the, of the, the, the, the creativity of our people. Look at that. The way. Oh man, this is going to make me cry. This is my old primary school man. Like going back here, I was looking at, I used to hide there for hide and seek and everything seems so small because when you're a kid, everything's so big. This is me at, I think, a lucky beach, just chilling with the people, man. I was immersed in the culture. Seeing all those kids in their uniforms on grabbing at your belt. That is amazing. Honestly, man, it was like, it reminded me of goosebumps again. It reminded me of, this is just, um, uh, uh, the stadium. I went there to go watch. And then the guy that the trainer was like, show you, I'm not training. I'm like, what do you mean? He's like, you are training. Get up. Okay. I had my fucking nice Jordans on and I just had to like work. He made any, I think he was trying to flex. He was trying to show me like, yo, I'm going to work you. Right. Right. He put us to work and that's me on holiday as well. This is open state. What is this video? Can people watch this? Yeah. I'm going to Instagram or go on EMG, EMG, um, what do you call the EMG axis? It says, uh, Israel, the last style bender out of Sonya in the YouTube, EMG, YouTube engaged media group. That's beautiful, man. But there's some more we're doing a documentary right now. Cause and they've like, Jeff's been following me around since 2015. And I want to like, this is the, I want to say this is the end of the first documentary, but the beginning of the next one, I want to show what I can do in Nigeria, what I can do in Africa. Cause even, um, Kamaru went to Makako for, we almost, well, not almost died there. We were in there with some killers. You see how that played? Go back. See how that plays? Go back forward. It's like a maze. Go forward. Yeah. See how that's like a maze. The first day we went there, I went there just trying to like show love to the hood, say what's up in all this area. Boys like, uh, I'll got what you need to do here. Like, what are you doing here? And I'm like, I'm just looking around your eye. You kind of, you must set to loss. Like you got to settle them. You got to make sure they all right. I was like, don't worry. We'll look after you guys. But then within the first five minutes, me and Abiola, my friend who came with me, he's like, we got to go. Cause he's very smart. He's very, very, very wrong. So we're like, I, and I had a guy with an AK with me, a security guard and the guys, the gangsters, they were kind of flexing. I was like, oh, fuck you guys. Then. So the next day, see this is the asshole in me. I went there shirtless, all my chains on fucking vest. And I got like more security with me with more AKs and went deep. We didn't have to go deep to get that sky shot. And Jeff hates me for it cause he fucking panicked the whole time. And I went deep and there's all these killers, man. Like literally I'm talking like you see scars on them like marks cause that's the bodies, the body counts and shit like that. And this one dude looked like Kimbo slice and he's like the head honcho. And he was arguing with this other guy because they were saying like, no, I'm giving them the tour. What they give us is my money and I'll sell it to you. And he's like, no, I'm the, you know, I'm the big dog. You report to me and they were kind of having an argument about it and it was real heated. And if they wanted to fuck us up right there and say, fuck you guys, it's a fucking maze. They know that shit like the back of their hand. Right. I have no idea. You know, we're fucked and you're walking through it exactly. And you're walking on planks and the water. You saw the water. It's fucking dirty, like disgusting. You know, but that's like one of the slums in Nigeria. But then you see the before the shot that was Victoria Island. That's that's like the contrast of Nigeria. You have dirt poor and you have well off like Lamborghinis, like people living nicely. Those are all the guys who scam people. Yeah. But they're smart as fuck. Yes. And that's the email shit. It's so old now. That's like, I don't know. I'm not your uncle. Don't check your emails. I'm a Nigerian prince. Don't worry. You get your money. Just wait. It's just the fees. The fees got to like the way the bank account set up, all that kind of stuff. Yeah. It's amazing that they figured it out to the point where that is synonymous with scams. It's like you saw the Nigerian scams. Yeah. Yeah. You hear about and that's the thing like we're scamming. But a lot of them is because of the opportunity. They're so smart, but the opportunity isn't there. So they can't go to school. They can't do that. So they'll hear about the guy who sold a fucking airport that didn't exist to Japan. Really? Remember that one? A Nigerian dude sold a fucking airport. We're winning. It wasn't a real airport. We're winning. Yeah. I mean, people do that with like buildings or Airbnb's, but that's a fucking airport. Airport. Okay. Bro, he sold an airport. Fuck. The Japanese are smart too, man. That's the thing. Yeah. We talked about it like a couple of weeks ago. Yeah. It's bonkers. Yeah. They spent a fuckload of money. It was like in the 80s or something. The 90s. Oh, really? Yeah. They got to make a movie about that. Well, they should. Here it goes. 242 million. Fuck off. Sold a fake airport for 242 million. How do you do that? It's fucking Nigeria, man. Not like I'm saying, this is like, this is not the best representative of people, but let's show you how smart. Well, listen, man, if you're stuck and you got nowhere out and you live in that maze, that's the way out. Exactly. You got to do what you got to do. I understand that. When I was in Dubai, I don't know if I should say the story. I was going to... Fuck it. No one's listening. We're on the boat for someone's birthday party, and I'm seeing all these kids, like 17, 16, 18, with iced out Rolexes. You know, I'm on a yacht partying for some guy's birthday, and they're just out there flexing, and I'm just like, what do you do? He said, oh, I invested in Bitcoin early. I was like, uh-huh. Now, Yahoo boy. They call him Yahoo boys, because, you know... But I knew already, but thing is, they're so smart. They know how to work. They know how to like... And they're all over the world. Like I said, we're like a virus. We're Nigerians and everywhere. Wherever you look in the world, we're everywhere, and we have our claim. But I can't wait till this documentary, man. Like, I really want to like show people over there what we can do. I want to show, first of all, the story. Like, it's not going to be like... You know, McGregor's documentary was dope, but it was more catered to the MMA fans. And anyone can watch it, but I want this to be more like the soccer mom can watch it. Someone from the burbs, someone from Alaska can watch it, and it's still real late. So I want to... There's different levels to this, but I'm looking forward to really putting that out. Are you thinking about opening the gyms over there? In Nigeria, yes. Yeah, eventually. I want to kit out some of the gyms. Like the one I went to, the sports stadium, I was at, I want to help them out with some stuff. This later on when I go through. And normally I do things like this. Like when I went there, I did some stuff, but I don't do it for like... It's weird when you're on this platform and I see people trying to do shit for the likes. For me, I cringe because I can't do that. But when you have a platform like this and you can bring attention to certain causes and certain people, then I don't mind using my platform for shit like that. So I really want to bring some attention to my people because I feel like they deserve it, but also they can earn it. They can earn it, and I know they can, man.