Earlier this month, the UFC flew the majority of its roster out to Las Vegas, Nevada for a special, weekend-long athletes retreat. Unsurprisingly, this weekend produced several tense moments between fighters.
The most high-profile run-in featured UFC strawweight Angela Magana and featherweight star Cris “Cyborg” Justino. The incident, which stemmed from some nasty comments Magana made about Cyborg online, ended with Cyborg punching Magana in the face.
Despite being widely perceived as the instigator of the incident, Magana is now pressing charges against Cyborg. This ugly twist has influenced may of the pair’s fellow fighters to weigh in on the situation. The latest to do so is UFC interim featherweight champ Max Holloway.
Speaking at a recent promotional event for his UFC 212 fight with Jose Aldo, Holloway gave his take on the drama.
“UFC has this nice new facility,” Holloway said (via MMAFighting.com). “They should have just went inside. I would have told Cyborg — if I was Cyborg, I would have told her, we’ve got this new facility, they’ve got a ring in there, let’s put on 16-ounce gloves and try to take each other down, then shake hands and go our way. That’s what I would have done.”
Though he believes things unfolded unfavorably, he also believes that that Magana should have known what was coming.
“At the end of the day, if you’re going to talk shit on Twitter, and you’re going to see this person, you gotta think that something’s going to happen, you know?,” Holloway said. “And then when someone’s in your face, that close and whatever, it’s just like, you need to be fight-ready.”
“It’s a fighter thing, you know?” he said. “[If] I [was] talking all this sh*t on Twitter, you know, you got punched in the face, you should have punched me back. Or, I’m going to punch you back, like ‘boom, boom.’ You move real fast, it’s a fight, it is what it is.”
What’s your take on this unfortunate Cyborg-Magana drama? Is Max Holloway right?
This article first appeared on BJPenn.com on 5/28/2017.