This might be the best angle to determine what prompted the UFC 229 post-fight melee.
UFC commentator Joe Rogan laid the blame solely at Dillon Danis’ door and claimed that it was his taunting which provoked Khabib Nurmagomedov to jump out of the Octagon and kick-start the brawl which saw Conor McGregor subsequently punched from behind by a member of Nurmagomedov’s crew.
McGregor’s head coach John Kavanagh, who was stood next to Danis throughout the main event, insisted that he didn’t hear the Jiu Jitsu whiz instigate the altercation.
Danis, like McGregor, is no stranger to trash-talk but another individual may have been the reason for things getting out of hand in Las Vegas’ T-Mobile Arena on Saturday night.
After McGregor tapped out to a Nurmagomedov neck crank in the fourth round, the Russian’s Dominance MMA managing partner Rizvan Magomedov was one of the first people to make his way up the steps to congratulate ‘The Eagle’.
But en route, Magomedov engaged with Danis by tapping him on the back repeatedly.
While Danis and Nurmagomedov had already been exchanging words, it appears that it wasn’t until Nurmagomedov spotted the back-and-forth between Danis and Magomedov that he decided to scale the fence.
Journalist Mike Russell, who is the authority on Nurmagomedov’s camp, having done an in-depth investigation into the lightweight champion’s controversial manager, Ali Abdelaziz, shared footage of the incident from right behind McGregor’s corner.
This vid shows Khabib's Dominance MMA managing partner Rizvan Magomedov harassing Dillon Danis who pushes him away as Nurmagomedov notices the skirmish & jumps in to assist. Magomedov who can be seen in other videos scuffling with police trying to break up the brawl was arrested. pic.twitter.com/vP4iFiH219
— Mike Russell 🕵️ (@MIKERUSSELLMMA) October 9, 2018
Another clip of Magomedov throwing punches at Danis and trying to get around/away from police who eventually detain him. pic.twitter.com/fgBFZ1tEZJ
— Mike Russell 🕵️ (@MIKERUSSELLMMA) October 9, 2018
https://twitter.com/MIKERUSSELLMMA/status/1050009740179361792
This is not to say that tempers wouldn’t have flared regardless because the hostility between the teams was already at boiling point after pre-fight comments about Nurmagomedov’s country and family but the new footage does seem to suggest that it was the exchange with Magomedov that caused ‘The Eagle’ to jump out of the cage.
“The first thing I wanted to show him, is the difference between our people, and his people,” said Nurmagomedov. “We know our history, our ancestors, and what our people have been through. Nothing can break us.
“And with what happened afterwards, some people say I did the wrong thing, others that I did the right thing. You can’t confine an eagle to a cage. And I showed them that.”
