By Staff Writer Ben Pfeffer.
If you’re wondering why, out of nowhere, you are starting to see random UFC posts, it is because the number one lightweight fighter, Khabib, won his fight and then flew out of the octagon into the crowd to attack somebody.
Khabib attacked opponent Conor McGregor’s trainer after beating McGregor into a submission victory. The trainer and Khabib obviously did not like one another, and Khabib lost the audience’s respect once he flew into the crowd to attack him.
Khabib’s team and trainers were also noticeably upset with McGregor and his team. After the fight, when everybody was distracted by Khabib attacking the trainer, a few of Khabib’s team members jumped into the octagon and attacked McGregor.
The team punched Conor a few times in the head from behind before being restrained and arrested. McGregor ended up not pressing charges.Meanwhile, Khabib was getting mushed back into the ring asking for his belt. However, Dana White, President of UFC, rightfully, would not put the belt on him in the octagon because, as he said, ”I felt that if we put the belt on him in the middle of the octagon it was gonna rain and I thought that people would throw whatever they had into the octagon and I thought it would be a dangerous situation, so I didn’t do it. I said we’re gonna be lucky just getting him out of here without him getting pelted so that’s what we tried to do.”
Dana White was very impressed with all the security involved with the event. He mentioned that it was the most security he has ever had at any event and that the security did an amazing job containing the situation so that it would not spread into the streets.
In the post-fight press conference, Khabib answered one question and then left, but that one question tells us a lot about why he did what he did.
Khabib was asked “What caused you to go over the cage and go after Conor’s team?” to which he responded:
“He talk about my religion. He talk about my country. He talk about my father. He come to Brooklyn and he broke bus. He almost killed a couple people. What about this? Why people talk about I jump over the cage?”
Khabib is referring to what Conor and his team said during press conferences, the weigh-in, and basically any time they interacted. He is also mentioning a situation that happened in Brooklyn where Conor McGregor threw a dolly through a bus window that had UFC fighters in it.
This event brings up a couple issues that have been discussed before. How should this be handled? Should UFC fights be treated with more respect like the standard sports or more like WWE with the trash talking?
This should be handled by suspending Khabib for a while and stripping him of the title until he returns to reclaim it. Khabib’s two-million-dollar purse is being withheld.
McGregor should have had some UFC related punishment besides paying millions of dollars to fix the bus incident because although it didn’t happen in the octagon, it happened between many UFC fighters and teams. He is currently on a one-month suspension from UFC on medical grounds only.
UFC fights should not have trash talk taken out of them. If a fighter cannot withstand the trash talking, they can shut the opponent up in the octagon. This is exactly what Khabib did, but then he brought it out of the octagon. When you’re a fighter there are always going to be people trash talking you, you can’t fight every single one of them.
Khabib disagrees, while answering the same question in the post-fight press conference, Khabib says:
“Media a little bit change MMA. This is respect sport. This is not trash talking sport. Like I told you before guys, I wanna change this game. I don’t want people to talk [bad] about opponents. Talk [bad] about his father, religion. You cannot talk about religion, you cannot talk about nation. Guys, you cannot talk about this stuff.”
Khabib has since threatened to quit UFC if he doesn’t get his way.
This fight will most-likely change the future of MMA. Nobody will ever attack somebody by jumping out of the octagon again.
This will likely create a two-sided war in UFC, one side with Khabib who thinks there should be more respect and one side with McGregor who thinks trash talking is vital to keeping the sport alive.