Dricus du Plessis and Israel Adesanya are already over the UFC 305 press conference.

This Saturday, du Plessis puts his middleweight title on the line against Adesanya in the main event of UFC 305 and on Thursday, their heated rivalry boiled over into an emotional press conference with Adesanya even breaking out into tears as the two traded barbs. However, after successfully making weight on Friday, Adesanya spoke with the UFC Morning Weigh-In Show crew where he addressed the event, saying he’s already put it past him as he’s focused on the task at hand.

“For me, if you don’t know my story, don’t speak on it,” Adesanya said. “But again, I let that out, then. It was good for me to get that out because it’s been awhile, and now I’m back to my form and I’m cold.”

The enmity between Adesanya and du Plessis has ebbed and flowed over the past year, beginning when Adesanya was champion and du Plessis pledged to become the first “true African champion” in UFC history. In the lead up to this fight, things between the two seemed to quiet down some until the press conference cranked the emotions back up, which could be a mistake for du Plessis, as Adesanya believes he can channel the fire effectively on Saturday.

“If you know how to use it right,” Adesanya said when asked about bringing emotions into a fight. “I am an emotional person but I’m also very emotionally intelligent, unlike most people. I know when to use the fire to burn the power within. Soon. We’re less than 24 hours from when we scrap and you guys will see then.”

Mental warfare has a long history in combat sports and MMA but du Plessis says that’s not what happened in this instance. After he also successfully made weight, the UFC middleweight champion also spoke with the UFC 305 Morning Weigh-In Show, saying he wasn’t trying to play mind games with Adesanya.

“Getting in his head? Not at all,” du Plessis said. “It wasn’t a plan. It wasn’t emotional for me. It was emotional depending on who you ask, and that was it. He got emotional, I understand that. He said he did a lot of soul searching. It looked like to me there’s quite a few things still bothering him, but that’s not my problem.

“It wasn’t the plan, but of course I had to pull some strings and see where it got me...”

“Let me tell you this, I won’t be bullied. I won’t be bullied, ever,” du Plessis continued. “When you have guys that act tough, that want to bully, once they get that medicine, that’s how you stop a bully. I always tell this to the kid students at my gym: bullying is bad, bullying is not right, bullying is terrible. When a bully gets his own medicine, that’s when he’ll stop bullying. If a bully comes and punches you every single day and you let it slide let it slide, but then one day you hit him straight in the nose, I promise you he won’t do it again. You put him on his ass. I got taught that by my dad, I got taught that by my brothers, that’s how I was brought up.

“I’m not a disrespectful person. I know that for a fact and I won’t be told otherwise. I’m always respectful if you’re respectful towards me. If you’re going to try and bully me, if you’re going to try and make threats on my life, make any kind of threats towards me, I won’t allow that... You bully them back and show them what it’s like, and they never like that.”

But while du Plessis can’t seem to see eye to eye with Adesanya on most things, one thing he does agree with “The Last Stylebender” on is that come Saturday, it’s all business.

“I honestly believe emotion has no place in that octagon,” du Plessis said. “Any emotion is one feeling too many in there. When we’re getting in there, it’s strictly business...

“Now all the talking is over. That was not Dricus the fighter that was there. That was Dricus who had to be there for that press conference. Dricus the fighter is the one showing up tomorrow, and he’s a serious guy.”