“Were not PREPARED for THAT,” Dana White REVEALS what exactly the UFC didn’t see coming and is to be blamed for
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Khamzat Chimaev- Dana White- Nate Diaz
Who knew that even before their fight, Nate Diaz and Khamzat Chimaev’s rivalry would create so much heat that it would make Dana White end one of their events held during the fight week before the fight night? White, the President of the UFC, had to call off the UFC 279 press conference. UFC 279 is headlined by Chimaev and Diaz in a 5-round war which is Chimaev’s first-ever PPV headliner and Diaz’s last UFC fight.
According to multiple sources, what happened before the press conference was initially UFC welterweight Chimaev and his team started a verbal back and forth with fellow welterweight competitor Kevin Holland backstage. The situation included some moments of physical altercations as well and would’ve turned into a full-scale fight if not for former UFC welterweight and longtime athlete manager and coach Tiki Ghosn who got between both the fighters.
Eventually, UFC megastar Nate‘s team arrived and they had their own verbal spars with Chimaev’s team after Diaz was talking to Tiki Ghosn who was standing with Chimaev’s team. Eventually, bottles were reported to have been thrown between such a large number of men that the staff itself wasn’t enough to control the situation. The press conference got cancelled but Holland and his opponent Daniel Rodriguez did take in a few questions.
Dana White says Tiki Ghosn took punches, kicks and 2 water bottle throws on himself to stop the backstage brawl
In a post-cancellation media scrum of the UFC 279 press conference, White talks about what happened and how this would not happen again. Fair enough to say, White wasn’t even interested in how this fiasco will help to sell the fight in any way, he is always in for the way things should go but if they don’t, what can you say, it’s the fight business. In the midst of the scrum, White was asked if he thinks it was his mistake or not.
“I don’t know if we made a mistake but it’s a big difference between making mistakes and not being fully prepared for something… when you know that you’ve guys that don’t like each other, you make sure that they’re isolated. You have plenty of security around… what we didn’t have enough people for was everybody to start fighting…
There were only so many people back here that could handle these types of situations. Tiki, if it wasn’t for Tiki we would’ve been in big trouble… Tiki took a couple for the team he’s not even on our team… Tiki took a couple of water bottles to the head, a couple of slaps, kicks, thanks Tiki!” concluded White. Going into the future, White has also assured that this won’t happen again and there will also be a restriction on the number of people a fighter is allowed to bring with him/her.
Ghosn is 45 years old and fought in MMA from the years 1998 to 2009. He is 10-7 in his overall MMA career and has also fought in WEC and Strikeforce as well besides the UFC. On his Instagram account, you can see Ghosn assisting fighters such as Alexander Volkov, Brian Ortega, Cheick Congo and many more. What do you make of this whole backstage debacle of the UFC 279 presser? Do you think the UFC has proven to be not capable time and again of taming the hostile situations for peace?
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Abhai Singh Tanwar
(1386 Articles Published)