The UFC 279 presser was canceled due to a brawl reportedly started by Khamzat Chimaev and Kevin Holland snowballing into absolute chaos backstage. UFC president Dana White accepted that while the UFC was prepared for a scuffle between Chimaev and his opponent Nate Diaz, they weren’t ready for an all-out brawl involving multiple fighters.
The event was scheduled to take place at 4 p.m. local time but was running nearly 30 minutes late with no fighters in sight.
White then took the podium and announced it was a ‘shit show’ backstage and instead of doing the press conference at once, the fighters would be brought out in pairs.
Kevin Holland and Daniel Rodriguez were both brought out and did their press conference and as the promotion tried to bring out the next set, Dana White called off the press conference. He said it would be for everyone’s safety. The UFC boss later said to the media it was Kevin Holland and Khamzat Chimaev that got into it backstage.
“Yeah, this ain’t gonna happen, I apologize, everybody, I am in very weird waters here. This has never happened in the history of the company. Trust me when I tell you, this was the right decision not to do this press conference right now. (Crowd boos) I hear ya, I’m with ya but for everybody’s safety this is the right decision, alright, I apologize. Thanks for coming,” White said to the crowd who attended the UFC 279 press conference.
Dana White then spoke to the media after the event and added some context to what happened.
“There was multiple, crazy, I don’t even know what to call it. However many years, 22 years, however long I’ve been doing this, we’ve never had an incident like today,” White added.
“All hell broke loose out here. I don’t even know, we stopped it but we didn’t do a good job of not letting it happen.”
Watch Dana White’s comments below:
UFC 279 is set to be headlined by a welterweight fight between Nate Diaz and Khamzat Chimaev.
The full UFC 279 card is as follows:
- Khamzat Chimaev vs. Nate Diaz
- Li Jingliang vs. Tony Ferguson
- Kevin Holland vs. Daniel Rodriguez
- Irene Aldana vs. Macy Chiasson
- Johnny Walker vs. Ion Cutelaba
- Hakeem Dawodu vs. Julian Erosa
- Jailton Almeida vs. Anton Turkalj
- Jamie Pickett vs. Denis Tiuliulin
- Jake Collier vs. Chris Barnett
- Norma Dumont vs. Danyelle Wolff
- Chad Anheliger vs. Heili Alateng
- Elise Reed vs. Melissa Martinez
- Darian Weeks vs. Yohan Lainesse