Chaos ensued ahead of the Ultimate Fighting Championship’s latest
pay-per-view press conference.
On Thursday night, the UFC staged its regular press conference for
fans and media ahead of its marquee show. UFC
279 will go down on Saturday at the T-Mobile Arena in Las
Vegas, and as is tradition two days before the fights, the
promotion brought all the fighters together to place on stage and
take questions, followed by a staredown, for the last gathering
before the ceremonial weigh-ins on Friday. Things did not go
according to plan, as the UFC’s streamed press conference cut in
unexpectedly, with president Dana White trying to keep things
together. On the stage with him were only main card combatants
Kevin
Holland and Daniel
Rodriguez.
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“Absolute s—show back there,” an exasperated White remarked when
asked about what just happened. “Ask them [Holland and Rodriguez]
questions.”
After a brief topic for Holland – who was allegedly involved in
beginning a series of events that spiraled out of control for the
organization – White was then questioned again as to the sudden
change for the conference’s format.
“Yeah yeah, yeah, there’s lots of crazy s— going on back there,
yeah…we got it handled, talk about the fight,” he replied.
The fighters only answered questions for about three minutes until
they respectfully squared off, and White then took center stage
again. A brief wait led to White signaling for the staff to bring
the next fighters out, and co-headliner Jingliang
Li prepared to take the stairs. Instead of that, he was ushered
out, when UFC personnel apparently informed White that things had
spiraled out of control.
“Yeah, this ain’t gonna happen,” White said. “I apologize,
everybody. I am in very weird waters here, this has never happened
in the history of this company. Trust me when I tell you, this is
the right decision not to do this press conference right now…for
everybody’s safety, this is the right decision.”
TSN aired
a live broadcast of the post-event scrum with White, who filled in
a few details while leaving a lot of information unknown. He
explained that the weigh-ins will still go on as planned on Friday,
just with a larger number of security forces in place. He also
mentioned that every fight is still intact, and the event’s status
is not in question.
“It’s the business that we’re in,” he mentioned, before admitting
things were a little wilder than he would have preferred. “There’s
legitimate beef with people I didn’t even realize had legitimate
beefs…all hell broke loose back here today.”
White confirmed the entire situation arose from a dispute between
Kevin
Holland and Khamzat
Chimaev, who have a history with one another. In his backstage
scrum, he pointed out there were multiple altercations involving
many different groups of people, as it devolved into chaos. It is
unclear the total number involved, or if anyone suffered any damage
from it. He did say that former UFC fighter-turned-coach Tiki Ghosn
placed himself in harm’s way to break up some of the fighting, and
he was kicked, slapped and struck with flying objects including
water bottles.
“If it wasn’t for Tiki, we’d have been in big trouble. Where you
at, Tiki,” White asked. “Tiki took a couple for the team and he’s
not even on the team. Yeah, Tiki took a couple water bottles to the
head, and a couple slaps…kicks…thanks, Tiki.”
The camps for the headliners exceeded numbers that the UFC security
team was prepared to handle, with Nate Diaz’
crew rumored around 75 people alone. Chimaev also came with an
entourage of his own, and when scuffles began to break out, it took
everything the UFC staff had as well as White himself to cool
things down.
“Between Diaz’ team and Khamzat’s team, you had 100 people
here…you’re already off to a really bad start. If anything goes
wrong, you’ve got 100 people that you can’t control,” White
said.
“This is the craziest press conference we’ve ever had,” White
admitted. “This needed to be canceled.”
Just so everyone knows. I offered that clown
a free beard trim. I don’t know anywhere in the US that would offer
that service free! I am precise I promise I would not knick him. At
your service just like the hotel staff bro. https://t.co/Hiwwm40fg7— Kevin
Holland (@Trailblaze2top)
September 9, 2022
After the conference was shut down, a jovial Holland posted on
Twitter to hint about what happened.
“Just so everyone knows,” he wrote, “I offered that clown [Chimaev]
a free beard trim. I don’t know anyone in the US that would offer
that service free! I am precise I promise I would not knick [sic]
him. At your service just like the hotel staff bro.”