The highly anticipated UFC 279 press conference featuring Khamzat Chimaev and Nate Diaz was canceled at the last second after a backstage brawl involving Chimaev, Diaz, and Kevin Holland got so heated Dana White was forced to pull the plug. No footage from the incident has surfaced online yet, but Chimaev’s coach Andreas Michael shared his view on how things went down.
“What happened was, Khamzat went inside and was by himself, then it started with Kevin Holland,” Michael said in an Instagram video. “He gave him like a boot in the chest then they started whatever they’re doing. And then the Diaz crew came in, and they started doing what they’re doing, but nobody got injured. Thank God!”
“We’re here to fight in the cage and not in the streets,” he continued. “Like ‘fifty to one’ types of things like that? Sportsmen, that’s what we are, sportsmen. So let’s f**king be sportsmen and stop all this s**t. On Saturday we got a fight coming up, and that’s the most important thing, all right? So that’s about it.”
Michael finished up his video with a call for peace, and a promise that incidents like this wouldn’t score fighters a bout against Chimaev.
“Respect to everyone, you know? We’re not here to fight anyone,” he said. “And no, Kevin (Holland) is not gonna get a fight with Khamzat. Forget about that. All this goading and all these things, it doesn’t work. The same with Paulo (Costa), they’re not gonna get a fight, you understand? That’s about it. We’re gonna fight against the champs, and the guys that are over us. Not under us. Finished, it’s done. That’s how it is. We climb. We don’t regress, we progress.”
In the caption for the video, Andreas Michael also dispelled a number of rumors that came out of the aborted press conference, mostly from fake Twitter accounts pretending to be MMA media.
“Nobody got threatened with a gun, nobody got hurt, nobody went to hospital, nobody got stubbed, nobody got murdered, nobody!” he wrote. “My god were do these rumors come from. Stop it! Behave! These Young men scrapped it out a bit and that was it! PPV sales rise.”
The key thing is nobody was hurt, and the brawl didn’t spiral out to the point where the Nevada State Athletic Commission called off the fight. NSAC involvement is still a very real possibility, especially if any further violence goes down during the UFC 279 weigh-ins or in public areas.
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Both Khamzat Chimaev and Nate Diaz have groups of over thirty fighters accompanying them this weekend around Las Vegas. Kevin Holland and Paulo Costa are also wildcards. Things could easily get out of hand again if people don’t heed Andreas Michael’s words and remember to be sportsmen. It will be a very tense day and a half from now until the pay-per-view starts. Let’s hope cooler heads prevail.