Author: Anton Tabuena

Li Jingliang is all class.

Li Jingliang did nothing wrong, but he seemingly got the worst outcome out of all the chaos from UFC 279.

During the lead up, he was seen on UFC Embedded getting a nice custom suit and being excited to show it off at the press conference. The Chinese fighter has also been working on his English and was looking forward to the media event, only for Khamzat Chimaev to start fighting everyone and force its abrupt cancellation.

A day later, Chimaev badly botched his weight cut and forced late shuffling in the final fight card. So instead of having that big opportunity against Tony Ferguson, he ended up with a tougher and much bigger opponent, that wasn’t remotely as popular.

For all the talk about being a “real gangster” leading up to this event, Li was the only one who had to face a new opponent 10 lbs heavier on just a day’s notice.

To compound things, he then went on to lose a split decision that not many agreed with. Dana White, like many fans this week, slammed the judges after the match.

“I thought Li won the fight,” White said. “He did (get the short end of the stick). They’re right, you’re right, the judges were wrong in my opinion. It wasn’t even like I was like ‘Wow, that could have gone either way. I was shocked when they said split decision.”

Nate Diaz, who ended up facing Li’s original opponent, says he “felt bad” for the Chinese UFC star.

“They didn’t want to let me fight Chung Li. That motherf—ker had the dopest suit in the press conference!” Diaz said, before apologizing for butchering his name. “You know what I was talking about, I didn’t mean to do that to him.

“Did you guys see his suit? Yeah, I felt bad for him. They should have showed him love,” Diaz said.

Li, just like he did every step of the way, took the split decision in stride and remained classy in defeat.

“Huge thanks to everyone who supports me. I felt a lot of love from you this week. You guys are who I am fighting for. I fight for my people, my family and my dream,” Li wrote on Instagram.

“I will keep walking on the path which I choose. Will never stop and take what belongs to me back. Congrat (Daniel Rodriguez), my friend.”

Austin McBroom got dropped four times against AnEson Gib.

There’s more “Influencer boxing” this weekend, with Social Gloves 2 hosting AnEson Gib vs Austin McBroom and a clearly out of shape former NBA star in Nick Young taking on Malcom Minikon.

In the main event Gib survived a first round knockdown to go on and drop McBroom four times. He dropped McBroom twice in the third round, and twice again in the fourth where he eventually got the finish.

This marked Gib’s first professional boxing win. He lost in 2020 against fellow influencer and then debutant Jake Paul.

In the co-headliner, former Los Angeles Lakers player Nick Young looked out of shape, and he eventually flopped fell through the ropes in the fourth round of his exhibition match against Minikon. “Swaggy P” didn’t want to continue, and the exhibition was called off and ruled a No Decision, citing a phantom headbutt.

Full results for Social Gloves 2022 can be seen here.

Nate Diaz got his perfect send off.

Khamzat Chimaev vs Nate Diaz always felt like a terrible booking designed to try to hurt the Stockton native’s value as he heads towards free agency. After seeing both men perform tonight, it only highlighted just how bad that could’ve all turned out.

Fortunately, all that chaos during fight week caused some late shuffles and ended up with better match ups. Instead of Diaz and Ferguson being sacrificed to young killers, the two veterans got to have a fun and evenly matched scrap.

Both Diaz and Ferguson are known for their awkward timing and unorthodox styles, and combining them resulted in moments that were probably weirder than we could’ve ever imagined. Both men had a lot of antics and funny moments in there, but each were still very respectful with their showboating, if that made sense.

Ferguson had a lot of good moments and was scoring with nice leg kicks, but as the fight progressed, Diaz started pressuring and landing more of his boxing combinations. He didn’t quite look like the Diaz of old, but he landed enough shots by the fence that made Ferguson — and his corner — want a takedown.

It proved to be a bad idea, as the sloppy shot attempt was instantly met with a guillotine choke. Ferguson was forced to quickly tap, and Diaz had a vintage moment flexing for the camera as he finished the submission.

While UFC originally tried some pretty vindictive marketing, some wild circumstances had Diaz ending up with his hand raised to get the perfect send off.

Diaz said he’ll look to “take over” other sports next — likely boxing and even some grappling — but Diaz also left the door for a possible UFC return down the line. He of course also has that lucrative trilogy with Conor McGregor that can be made at some point.

• Say what you want about Khamzat Chimaev’s actions outside the cage or the people he chooses to associate himself with, but he looked great in his bout with Kevin Holland. Some people complained about him shooting when Holland was trying to touch gloves, but I didn’t really mind it as much as others did. (Protect yourself at all times!) Holland did a lot of things right when defending all those wrestling transitions, and that d’arce chain sequence. He’s a legitimate BJJ black belt too, and all those proper reactions and defensive maneuvers really just made me more impressed with just how Chimaev’s offense was so much better.
  I love d’arce chokes and the meta game behind it, and Holland did a lot of things right in trying to defend that. It’s just that Chimaev’s offense there is even better. Some may not have noticed those details, but Chimaev had an answer for every small reaction from Holland, and was just one step ahead in that finishing sequence. Just high level d’arce and front head lock transitions.
• Unfortunately, as good as his performance was, just about every non-fighting aspect from Chimaev was the complete opposite. He turned a lot of people off by the botched cut, then showing no remorse and just blaming others (including the doctor) for the miss. He won tonight, but he was constantly booed all throughout. His actions not only became a huge inconvenience for many as three fights got shuffled, but he lost his main event slot and the biggest opportunity of his career. Everything was already being handed to him on a silver platter but he still managed to fumble the bag. His tirade blaming Diaz for the fight not happening probably didn’t get him more fans either.
• Daniel Rodriguez vs Li Jingliang really could’ve gone either way, but it’s hard not to feel for “The Leech” in this case. He was screwed over repeatedly this entire week, but he still accepted a tougher and lower profile fight against a guy 10 pounds heavier. Everyone was talking about “real gangster” moves, but that’s exactly how Li acted by accepting that on a day’s notice. Unfortunately things didn’t work out. He lost his shot at Ferguson, then lost a split decision against a far bigger guy… and he still didn’t get to show off his suit!
• Did you ever imagine seeing an upkick liver shot finish? I never did. But that’s exactly what happened when Irene Aldana stopped Macy Chiasson. She also had a pretty nasty looking armlock earlier that almost finished the fight, but everyone will remember that fight for having the first ever upkick body shot knockout.
• Johnny Walker and Ion Cutelaba both desperately needed wins, but it was the former who got to stop that rough streak. Walker got an early finish again, but it was surprisingly done via choke, the first ever submission in his UFC career. Cutelaba has just two wins in his last eight fights, and I wonder how long he’ll be sticking around.

This is UFC 279 in a few short tweets.

After a wild week leading up to it, UFC 279 is finally in the books. Match ups were changed, and instead of Nate Diaz being sacrificed to a young rising star in Khamzat Chimaev on his last fight, he instead won a fun back-and-forth match with a fellow veteran in Tony Ferguson.

Chimaev fumbled the bag from his botched weight cut, losing his main event slot and an opportunity against a superstar. He still did really well with his new match up though, quickly taking Holland down, and going on a d’arce choke chain to get another quick submission finish.

Below, we analyze the pros and cons of each of the key bouts, with a quick twitter thread that’s short and fitting for people’s social media era attention spans:

And that’s about it. For more social media musings, follow me on twitter over at @antontabuena, and of course you should do that for Bloody Elbow’s official twitter account as well.

Dana White says “we weren’t prepared” for all that chaos.

If you haven’t heard by now, the UFC 279 pre-fight press-conference was cancelled after a massive backstage melee said to have involved about a hundred people. Twitter obviously had a field day reacting to the madness, but more details have since come in about the incident.

According to a report from MMA Fighting, Khamzat Chimaev initiated the incident after kicking Kevin Holland backstage. After that scuffle was settled and Holland went on stage, there was another incident between Chimaev and Nate Diaz’s camp that reportedly involved water bottles being thrown.

Dana White also confirmed that the first altercation was between Chimaev and Holland, before it started escalating with the others. He also says that among those scheduled for the press conference, four of the six fighters and their camps were involved.

“All hell broke loose,” White said after the incident. “We stopped it, but we didn’t do a good job of not letting it happen.

“Yeah [it was Khamzat Chimaev and Kevin Holland that started it],” White said. “There were multiple things going on at the same time. It wasn’t just one thing that erupted and it happened. There were multiple things going on at the same time.

“So there was security over there, there was no security over there,” White continued. “There was no security over there cause everybody was dealing with the other thing and once it all started erupting, it was just a complete s—t show.”

White says Tiki Ghosn, a former UFC fighter turned manager was also involved in trying to settle things down.

“If it wasn’t for Tiki, we would have been in trouble,” White said. “Tiki took a couple for the team and he’s not even on the team. Tiki took a couple of water bottles to the head, a couple slaps, kicks. Thanks Tiki.”

White says the next steps will involve making sure this won’t happen again.

“No (there won’t be fines). This is what we do,” White said. “This is the business that we’re in. This is the fight business. These things happen. What we’ll do is we look at how this happened today, why were we unprepared for this, why we were not able to manage this backstage better than we did, and we’ll be better next time.”

“When you know that you have guys that don’t like each other, you make sure that they’re isolated, you have plenty of security around,” White explained. “You know how Nate and Khamzat are, they could have some words and we have enough people here to deal with it.

“What we didn’t have enough people for was everybody to start fighting. When everybody starts fighting and there was more than just fighting going on that security was dealing with. We weren’t prepared.”

For what it’s worth, Holland reacted to the reports of Chimaev kicking him.

Pro fighters reacted to the cancelled UFC 279 press-conference.

The UFC 279 pre-fight press conference was cancelled because of multiple altercations backstage that security couldn’t control. Dana White said that supposedly, a hundred people were in the melee, with slaps, kicks, and water bottles involved.

“Yeah this ain’t gonna happen. I apologize, everybody. I’m in very weird waters here, this has never happened in the history of this company,” White said about the cancellation. “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. I apologize. Thanks for coming.”

This all led to the UFC’s typical press-conference highlight clip to be hilariously short:

With all that chaos, it of course led to a lot of chatter and reactions on social media. Here are some of the fighters’ tweets about the melee and the subsequent cancellation of the press conference: