Moments before the top six fighters on Saturday’s card were set to take the stage at the MGM Grand Garden Arena, UFC president Dana White revealed that some “crazy play” took place backstage. After announcing that the three fights would be released individually, Kevin Holland and Daniel Rodriguez had a brief Q&A with reporters before White was told of more backstage chaos and announced that the rest of the press conference was over. During an argument with reporters, White said the fight started with a fight between Tsymaev (11-0 MMA, 5-0 UFC) and Holland (23-7 MMA, 9-4 UFC). Later reports indicated punches and kicks, and then others — including Nate Diaz — got involved. Video confirming the reports is still scarce, but Holland chimed in with a message to Chimaev, who offered his own statement to him and Diaz (20-13 MMA, 15-11 UFC) on his Instagram stories. “I told them: Don’t joke with us,” Chimaev said in Russian (MMA Junkie translation). “Kevin got what he deserved. Diaz got what he deserved.” Chimaev is set to meet Diaz in the welterweight main event of UFC 279, which takes place at T-Mobile Arena and airs on pay-per-view after preliminaries on ESPNNews and ESPN+. The pair were scheduled to have their first face-to-face interaction and go head-to-head at the press conference, but UFC boss White opted to call things off after things broke out backstage. “The Diaz camp appeared with 57 people. Khamzat’s team had 30 or so people. It was crazy,” White said. “It was absolutely crazy to be here. … You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out where this whole press conference was headed.” For more on the card, visit MMA Junkie’s event hub for UFC 279. Russian reporter Dinislam Mav contributed to this story with translations.
