Former Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) middleweight champion, Israel Adesanya, has been arrested for taking brass knuckles through security and John F. Kennedy Airport in New York.
The 33-year-old Nigerian-New Zealander professional kickboxer, who lost his title by TKO to Alex Pereira in New York last Saturday, was arrested by Port Authority police in the American Airlines terminal on Wednesday.
According to a report on Daily Mail, a Port Authority spokesperson at the John F. Kennedy Airport in New York confirmed the arrest, saying Adesanya was booked for possessing ‘metal knuckles.’
Brass knuckles are a Class A misdemeanor in New York, and it is also illegal to bring them aboard an airplane. It’s not clear where Adesanya allegedly stored the weapon.
Spokespeople from the UFC are yet to react to the incident.
Adesanya’s loss has seen him plummet down the pound-for-pound rankings, dropping from No. 2 to No. 8 on MMAfighting.com.
A native of Lagos, Nigeria, Adesanya is now a citizen of New Zealand and currently lives in Auckland.
Longtime rivals Adesanya and Pereira went head-to-head on Saturday in a showdown for the UFC middleweight belt, where the latter emerged victorious after a brutal TKO stoppage late in the bout.
Despite claims that referee Marc Goddard called an end to the fight prematurely, Canadian fighter and trainer Firas Zahabi insists Adesanya should be ‘grateful’ for the decision.
TheNewsGuru.com (TNG) reports that as a mixed martial artist, Adesanya competed in the Middleweight division in the UFC, where he is a former UFC Middleweight Champion. In kickboxing, he is a former Glory Middleweight Championship title challenger.
As of November 14, 2022, he was number one in the UFC middleweight rankings, and number six in the UFC men’s pound-for-pound rankings.