Marc Marquez unleashes anger at Valentino Rossi: “It was intimidation. Peace? Not anymore”
Marquez will return for the 2023 MotoGP season (the second since Ros🎃si’s retirement) knowing that winning the championship will draw him level with his eternal rival’s tally of seven💦.
Their names will remain in folklore forever and fans will continue arguing about who is the greatest - but Marquez and Rossi’s feisty personal ﷺrelationship is clearly no closer to cooling ⭕down, nearly eight years on from their nastiest moments.
"That public attack at the press conference was bad,” Marquez said 🔥this week on Spanish TV, referring to 2015.
Rossi stunned the MotoGP paddock by claiming that his own Yamaha teammate and title rival, 168澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果历史:Jorge Lorenzo, was beꦯing aided to win the championship by Honda’s Marquez, who was no longer a contender.
“I had his phone number and Valentino had mine,” Marquez remembered. “And𝓡 we didn't call each other. I was 22 years old, he was more than 10 years old♊er, he had experience.
“The Malaysian pr𝓀ess conference arrived and instead of taking me aside andꦚ speaking he attacked me publicly, it was disrespectful. I think it was intimidation."
Rossi claimed “he is angry at me for a perso✱nal matter” at the time, adding “he would prefer Lorenzo to win”, in a notorious moment of MotoꦜGP history.
Days later, at the Malaysian MotoGP in 2015, Marquez and🐈 Rossi battled thrillingly - with a hint of venom.
"It was a crazy lap, we foug꧂ht in an incredible way,” Marquez recalled. “Then Valentino made that decision.
“He threw me. It was no accident.
“It may be that you push hard, losinဣg control of the bike and colliding with that of the opponent, but it is no coincidence that you corner a rider on the side of the track, look at him and hit him with his leg. It was in🐟tentional."
Marquez fell and retired from the race, Rossi was criticised by fellow riva🌺ls for his part and punished by starting at the back of the grid in the season-finale in Valencia,ꩵ which ultimately enabled Lorenzo to win the championship.
Marquez and Rossi have never recovered and, as he prepares to return to Sepang where their most notorious clꦿash occurred for the 2023 preseason test, the Honda rider has revisited their feud.
"I 🃏don't have꧟ to be friends with everyone,” he said said.
“At the beginning I was willing to make peace with Valentino, but not anymore. We may w🎀e𒆙ll be indifferent.”
It wasn’t always this way.
"I gr🌳ew up with two legends, one was Dani Pedrosa, the other was Valentino Rossi,” he said.
Rossi and Marquez’s loyal fan-bases have argued for almost eight years about who was the aggressor and w♋ho was the victim in their notorious 👍rivalry, and whose legacy will be greater.
Marquez, aged 29, must overcome two years of injury hel🌳l plus a substandard Honda b🐷ike this year if he is to match Rossi’s title tally.
The toxicity of their rivalry is part of the rea🀅son that Marquez no longer actively uses social me🌺dia.
"Maybe it's my point of view but there are fewer and fewer people who show c🌜haracter, preferring to hide behind a profile,” he said.
“Now e🔴verything you say ends up on social networks, triggering hundreds of comments. If you keep up with 🍎him, you end up feeling bad.
“It happened to me, but not anymore. I have a Twitter account, but I don't have it on my phone🃏.
“I have a social media manager, I tell him what he has to put, the photo that I always decide and he does it. I don't re﷽ad wh🅷at comes next.
“I like Instagram, but I never read comments there either. Twitter, on the other hand, is a butcher's shop. When I returned🧔 to compete I realised that being too much around social media, it distracts me. I live much better now.”
James was a sports journalist at Sky S✨ports for a decade covering everything from American sports, to football, to F1.
