WATCH: Pandemonium as Nate Diaz and Khamzat Chimaev cause a fight to break out between 100 team members, Press Conference Called off
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Diaz and Chimaev's entire entourage got into brawls at the press conference causing the event to be cancelled
If the word, s***show’s meaning were to be capsulated it would be the presser for UFC 279. Nate Diaz, Khamzat Chimaev, Kevin Holland, and many other allegedly got into an all-out brawl right before the press conference was supposed to kick off. Apart from multiple reports of injuries, this also eventually led to the entire press conference being canceled.
The timeline as of yet is murky but from what we know all of it transpired quite abruptly. Both men had sizeable crews backing them this weekend and needles to say, most among these crews were professional fighters. According to Dana White there were approximately 100 people backstage just accounting for Diaz and Chimaevs’s entourage.
Dana White admitted on a media scrum held in lieu of a press conference that the UFC was certainly not prepared for the amount of violence that would take place. Dana said that they expect these things to happen during the ceremonial weigh-in day and have appropriate security at the venue then. He also confirmed the remaining fight week traditions will continue as was only with added security this time.
The Nate Diaz-Khamzat Chimaev Brawl started with Kevin Holland
The most legible sequence of events comes to us from Ariel Helwani who through his many contacts managed to get a considerable amount of detail on what actually happened. Per Helwani the whole sequence of events conspired right behind the curtains of the main stage for the press conference. Here we get to know that the brawl originally started with a verbal back and forth between Kevin Holland.
This minor altercation slowly started getting more intense as the two started walking closer to each other as the two had pent-up aggression building from their prior spats on social media, at which point there was some pushing between the two teams involved. Tiki Ghosn, an MMA Manager, and former fighter managed by Dana White, got into the middle of these two teams and stopped everything before it spilled out.
It was at this point that Nate and his entourage walked into the same area. Nate’s crew and Tiki share a longstanding relationship and hence were justifiably angry when they saw him caught up between Chimaev’s crew. Here the two crews started exchanging words and it eventually transpired into a classic Diaz throwing Water Bottles situation where allegedly Tiki was hit several times.
Also Read: “Come Beat Me” Nate Diaz says he’s given up preparing for Khamzat Chimaev fight at UFC 279
UFC security then worked on separating the more than 100 men involved in the scuffle and eventually made the decision to cancel the press conference. Even after this, Darren Till and Kevin Holland were seen in a lobby picking up where they left off and exchanging words. The situation was about to break into another brawl when the UFC security decided to step in and separate them.
As Per Dana White, there were no serious injuries or any fight on the card that stood the risk of being canceled
Also Read: “Wannabe street sh*t” Kevin Holland EXPOSES Khamzat Chimaev during UFC 279 media scrum
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Jerin Mathew
(713 Articles Published)