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UFC 248: Israel Adesanya & Yoel Romero Octagon Interviews

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Israel Adesanya walked out of T-Mobile Arena still champion, but it was Yoel Romero who owned the loudest lines of the night.

The Octagon interviews after UFC 248’s main event turned into their own separate fight. Joe Rogan brought Israel Adesanya out first following his unanimous decision win, then handed the mic to Yoel Romero, who had clearly been waiting all night to say his piece. What followed was a pointed back-and-forth over exactly what happened — or didn’t happen — across five rounds in Las Vegas on March 7, 2020.

• Adesanya won by unanimous decision with scores of 48–47, 48–47, and 49–46, defending his middleweight title for the first time.
• Adesanya told Rogan, “It was a hard fight, but I did what I had to do,” defending his leg-kick-heavy game plan against a “stationary target.”
• Romero fired back at the champion in his own interview, shouting, “The people pay for the fight! You want to see a fight!” and accusing Adesanya of running for five rounds.

Adesanya Defends the Gameplan

Adesanya wasn’t apologetic when Rogan pressed him on the crowd’s boos, which had been audible through the championship rounds. He leaned into the criticism directly, framing his approach as calculated rather than cautious. His explanation centered on Romero’s power and unpredictability as a counter-striker — the same traits that have finished opponents throughout Romero’s career at 185 pounds.

The champion argued that closing distance on a dangerous puncher who was content to sit and wait was not his job to volunteer for. Instead, he picked his moments, worked behind low kicks, and let the scorecards do the talking. It wasn’t the kind of performance that gets replayed for highlight reels, but it kept his record unbeaten and his belt around his waist.

Romero Confronts the Crowd

Where Adesanya stayed composed, Romero was anything but. Visibly frustrated in his own interview moments later, the Cuban challenger turned toward the crowd and the cameras to make his case that the champion had ducked a real fight rather than won one. His accusation wasn’t really about the scorecards — it was about what he felt the paying crowd deserved and didn’t get.

“The people pay for the fight! You want to see a fight!”

Romero’s complaint echoed what much of the T-Mobile Arena crowd had already made clear with its boos during the later rounds. He characterized the entire five rounds as Adesanya avoiding contact rather than competing for it, a claim that lined up neatly with the stalemate atmosphere that had settled over the arena for most of the night. It was the rawest, most unfiltered moment of UFC 248’s entire card.

A Night Defined by Two Different Standards

Taken together, the two interviews captured a divide that had nothing to do with who actually won. Adesanya’s disciplined, point-scoring approach and Romero’s expectation of a toe-to-toe war were never going to produce the same verdict on how the fight should be remembered. One man walked away with the belt and a clear conscience about his tactics; the other walked away certain he’d been cheated out of the fight he came for.

For anyone following Adesanya’s title reign, the interview after UFC 251 against a very different kind of challenger in Jorge Masvidal’s post-fight press conference offers a useful comparison point in how these Octagon moments get shaped by the pace of the fight itself. The co-main event that night, covered in the Zhang Weili and Joanna Jedrzejczyk Octagon interviews, had delivered exactly the kind of high-output war the crowd wanted from the main event — which only made the contrast in tone between Adesanya and Romero’s post-fight comments land harder.