Khamzat Chimaev and Paulo Costa were forced to be separated at the UFC PI.
Paulo Costa shared a video on his YouTube channel of the altercation he had with Khamzat Chimaev at the UFC Performance Institute in Las Vegas.
Costa in the video, spoke about what transpired saying:
“And (Chimaev) said my name. He called me to talk. And I went there, I faced him. He said, ‘Hey, Borrachinha, why you talk about me?’ (LAUGHS) I say, ‘Man, why I talk about you? You want to fight me?’ He said, ‘No, I want to know why you talk about me.’”
Continuing Costa said:
“(I replied), ‘If you beat Nate Diaz, I want to fight you.’ And he froze! He say, (Dumfounded facial expression), ‘OK, so let’s fight now.’ And his whole team (went) to the middle between me and him. Man, this guy is scared. He’s scared as f**k! And I will show for you guys the whole video. Go look.”
It was during an interview with ‘MMA Junkie’ that Jake Shields, former MMA fighter, also shared his take on what occurred between Chimaev and Costa at UFC PI:
“I was there this morning, working out with Paulo Costa, going through some techniques and some drilling, and then all of the sudden we hear on the side of the cage Khamzat starts yelling at us, cussing out Paulo ‘well you want to fight?’ So we look over and it’s him and 10 dudes.”
“So Paulo jumps up, starts talking shit, I run over to back up Paulo, because I don’t know if they’re trying to jump him. I recognized a couple of guys, I wasn’t sure they probably wouldn’t jump me. We had a bunch of guys that didn’t recognize who ran over start talking shit and then you know…’Let’s fight now. Let’s fight now.’”
Concluding Shields said:
“But as he’s saying that he’s walking down the stairs. It seemed like it was kind of more of an act maybe more for cameras more than anything. I guess someone said afterwards he had been scoping us out for 10 minutes, he wanted to fight Paulo, run in there and start swinging on him… it seemed like a weak thing, I think that’s why he was upset because Paulo called him a fake gangster and it kind of was a perfect example of him being a fake gangster.”
Khamzat Chimaev (11-0 MMA) is set to battle Nate Diaz (21-13 MMA) this coming Saturday, September 10th at UFC 279 in the welterweight main event.
Paulo Costa (14-2 MMA) is hot off a unanimous decision win over Luke Rockhold (16-6 MMA) at UFC 278 in their middleweight bout.
What are your thoughts on the encounter between Chimaev and Costa at the UFC PI? Publicity stunt or an actual challenge?
Share your thoughts in the comment section PENN Nation!