According to UFC welterweight contender Matt Brown’s former Brazilian jiu-jitsu coach Rodrigo Botti, his sucker-punch of Brown in the hotel lobby after UFC 198 was actually revenge of a cheap attack he claims Brown and his friends did to him in the pas…
According to UFC welterweight contender Matt Brown’s former Brazilian jiu-jitsu coach Rodrigo Botti, his sucker-punch of Brown in the hotel lobby after UFC 198 was actually revenge of a cheap attack he claims Brown and his friends did to him in the past.
Botti, who sucker-punched Brown in the lobby of a hotel in Curitiba, Brazil this past weekend, only to get caught by Brown’s friends and beaten down after he tried running (watch the video of Botti getting beaten down here), spoke with MMAFighting.com to explain his side of the story.
Below is an excerpt from Botti’s conversation with the MMA website, where he explains the back-story behind his decision to sucker-punch Brown in Curitiba this past weekend.
“When you’re cowardly assaulted like I was, you can’t control yourself. This guy destroyed my career, I lost part of my vision because of him, had to do another surgery. I couldn’t sleep normally for 15 months, it changed my entire life. I simply exploded (when I saw him)… He was a coward when he did what he did to me, and I’m satisfied with my attitude now. We are even. Everything could have been prevented if he had admitted he was wrong when he attacked me, or at least called me apologizing. Everybody is entitled to make a mistake, but the problem is that he had a fight coming up with Johnny Hendricks and a win could get him a title shot, so he was afraid of being punished. He decided to lie about it. That’s when it became personal, brother. I would never work with him anymore, but if he apologized, I’d forget it. If people are saying I was a coward against Matt Brown, which I don’t think I was, I’ll say that one cowardly action was paid back with another. But I don’t believe I was a coward.”
No word yet on who “The Immortal” will face, but he is likely looking at a must-win situation. After putting together a seven-fight win streak, Brown has gone just 1-3 over his last four, including decision losses to current UFC champion Robbie Lawler and former titleholder Johny Hendricks.
UFC welterweight Matt Brown faced a lot of adversity this past weekend in Brazil. First off he enraged the Brazilian crowds during the weigh-ins for his feature prelim bout with home favorite Demian Maia, flipping them off amid chants of ‘you’re going to die’ from the 15,000 strong crowd. Then came the night of the
UFC welterweight Matt Brown faced a lot of adversity this past weekend in Brazil. First off he enraged the Brazilian crowds during the weigh-ins for his feature prelim bout with home favorite Demian Maia, flipping them off amid chants of ‘you’re going to die’ from the 15,000 strong crowd. Then came the night of the fight, and ‘The Immortal’ was mobbed by angry fans on the way to the octagon. He was struck a number of times, finally striking back with a right hand as one fan yanked the hood of his Reebok outfit.
It’s never a good start whn you get hit before you’ve even got started fighting, whether it impacted on Brown’s performance is unknown, but he certainly got dominated by the far superior grappler. Maia controlled ‘The Immortal’ much to the delight of the 45,000 seater stadium which was packed to the gills. The partisan supporters raised the roof on the arena as Maia submitted Brown in the third round.
Here’s the video replay of the fight before the fight: So after taking some strife before the fact, then getting burnt by Maia in rather convincing fashion, it looked as though Brown’s excursion to Brazil couldn’t get much worse. That statement couldn’t be any further from the truth, as ‘The Immortal’ was jumped by an old acquaintance in the UFC 198 host hotel the morning after the event…
(“Hey Fabricio, it’s me Dan. I know this probably isn’t the time to tell you this, but you really dun f*cked up, kid.”via Getty)
Fabricio Werdum may have only been a -185 favorite heading into his UFC 198 title tilt with Stipe Miocic on Saturday, but the consensus across the board seemed to be that he would either utilize his vastly-improved striking skills to put away his Cleveland-born opponent on the feet or take him to the mat and submit him using his world-renowned Jiu Jitsu. This was the man who defeated Cain Velasquez, after all, and was hoping to kickstart his legacy as “the greatest heavyweight of all time” with a big win in front of 45,000 Brazilian fans.
The Fabricio Werdum that actually showed up at UFC 198, however, could not have looked further from the greatness he so desired. Chalk it up to blind confidence or whatever you will, but “Vai Cavalo” — a man who has not only submitted 3 of the greatest heavyweights of all time, but dominated the likes of Mark Hunt and Travis Browne in recent appearances — appeared to temporarily lose complete control of both his body and mind on Saturday night. It was quite possibly the most mind-blowingly stupid performance since Koji Oishi tried to block Nick Diaz’s punches with punches, and the result was a new champion who was all but handed the belt on a silver platter.
(“Hey Fabricio, it’s me Dan. I know this probably isn’t the time to tell you this, but you really dun f*cked up, kid.”via Getty)
Fabricio Werdum may have only been a -185 favorite heading into his UFC 198 title tilt with Stipe Miocic on Saturday, but the consensus across the board seemed to be that he would either utilize his vastly-improved striking skills to put away his Cleveland-born opponent on the feet or take him to the mat and submit him using his world-renowned Jiu Jitsu. This was the man who defeated Cain Velasquez, after all, and was hoping to kickstart his legacy as “the greatest heavyweight of all time” with a big win in front of 45,000 Brazilian fans.
The Fabricio Werdum that actually showed up at UFC 198, however, could not have looked further from the greatness he so desired. Chalk it up to blind confidence or whatever you will, but “Vai Cavalo” — a man who has not only submitted 3 of the greatest heavyweights of all time, but dominated the likes of Mark Hunt and Travis Browne in recent appearances — appeared to temporarily lose complete control of both his body and mind on Saturday night. It was quite possibly the most mind-blowingly stupid performance since Koji Oishi tried to block Nick Diaz’s punches with punches, and the result was a new champion who was all but handed the belt on a silver platter.
It cannot be understated how surreal it was to see a fighter with Werdum’s technical prowess literally charge face first into the fists of his opponent while throwing the kind of telegraphed 1-2 punches usually found on an episode of Cops. He didn’t even cut off the cage, for Christ’s sake! THIS IS DAY ONE STUFF, FABRICIO.
In the end, it’s hard not to see Werdum’s performance at UFC 198 as anything but reckless. He’s asking for a quick rematch at UFC 200, because of course he is, and given the way in which the UFC operates these days, it’s very likely that he’ll receive it. Until that day comes, however, there won’t be enough “happy face” masks in the world to suppress his sadness.
Rather than focus on Vitor Belfort‘s nearly-as-stupid decision to pull guard against Ronaldo Souza and get immediately TKO’d in last weekend’s co-main event, we figured it would be nice to highlight some of the positive takeaways from UFC 198. First up on that list, obviously, would have to be Cris Cyborg‘s long-awaited UFC debut. Paired up against self-admitted journeyman Leslie Smith, the current Invicta featherweight champion looked faster, more dynamic, and more technical with her strikes than ever before… a scary notion if you’re, say, the one woman who has been needling her for what feels like a decade now. The end result of Cyborg’s time away from the octagon, in any case, was an absolutely savage ass-kicking.
Smith may be protesting the stoppage to anyone who will listen, but really, referee Eduardo Herdy was only putting a stop to the inevitable before it got out of hand. The fact is that Smith landed maybe 2 punches in 80 seconds and was caught between a rock and a hard place (which, conveniently, are the names Cyborg has bestowed upon her fists) before the fight was stopped, so let’s just credit her for having the guts to take the fight in the first place and move on to figuring out how Cyborg can make the cut to 135, because that shit needs to happen.
Can we talk about Matt Brown for a second? What a week it has been for this poor guy. Paired up against Demian Maia in the featured prelim of the evening, “The Immortal” knew he would be entering hostile territory, but decided that the best course of action to combat this would be to flip off the Curitiba crowd during Friday’s weigh-ins. This…..did not seem like a strong move, in retrospect.
You can check out the highlights from Brown’s third round submission loss to Maia here, but basically, it looked like every performance that we’ve come to expect from Maia 2.0. More interesting, however, were the assaults Brown was forced to deal with both before and after the fight. The first you can check out above, wherein Brown is hit no less than three times on the way to the ring before giving the final assailant a once-in-a-lifetime souvenir.
Crazy, right? Well that doesn’t hold a candle to what happened in the hotel lobby after the fight. According to MiddleEasy, Brown was then sucker-punched by his former coach, Rodrigo Botti, in the hotel that he was staying in. The video above captures Brown’s friend, Vinicius “Pequeno” Lemos, laying some good old fashioned street justice on Botti while waiting for the police to arrive. Brazilians, man, they’re f*cking crazy.
The full results for UFC 198 are below.
Main card
Stipe Miocic def. Fabricio Werdum via first-round KO (2:47)
Jacare Souza def. Vitor Belfort via first-round TKO (4:38)
Cris Cyborg def. Leslie Smith via first-round TKO (1:21)
Mauricio Rua def. Corey Anderson via split decision
Bryan Barberena def. Warlley Alves via unanimous decision
Undercard
Demian Maia def. Matt Brown via submission (rear-naked choke) (R3, 4:31)
Thiago Santos def. Nate Marquardt via first-round KO (3:39)
Francisco Trinaldo def. Yancy Medeiros via unanimous decision
John Lineker def. Rob Font via unanimous decision
Antonio Rogerio Nogueira def. Patrick Cummins via first-round TKO (4:52)
Sergio Moraes vs. Luan Chagas ruled a draw
Renato Moicano def. Zubaira Tukhugov via split decision
A few close shaves for Matt Brown in Brazil… It was a pretty sub standard weekend in the life of Matt Brown, but surprisingly his loss to Demian Maia was at the bottom of the list of things that sucked in Brazil for ‘The Immortal.’ The strange events of the UFC 198 fight weekend for
It was a pretty sub standard weekend in the life of Matt Brown, but surprisingly his loss to Demian Maia was at the bottom of the list of things that sucked in Brazil for ‘The Immortal.’ The strange events of the UFC 198 fight weekend for the entertaining welterweight slugger started before he’d even stepped foot in the octagon. Brown had flipped off the crowd at the UFC 198 weigh ins, instantly making himself some 15,000 Brazilian enemies as his hit the scales with his back turned to them. Apparently they didn’t take kindly to this gesture, and the drama spilled over in to the arena on fight night.
During his UFC 198 walkout, Matt Brown was swiped at, grabbed, and even struck by one angry fan, forcing ‘The Immortal’ to throw a punch before he’d even made it to the octagon. Check out the video of that crazy moment:
Well it wasn’t the end of the world for Brown, perhaps a slightly poor timed annoyance on a night already filled with pressure, but he remained relatively unscathed. After being dominated and submitted by Demian Maia inside three rounds, ‘The Immortal’ was then attacked the following day by his former coach Rodrigo Botti…
Matt Brown is having one hell of a time in Brazil… It’s been a very rough weekend for Matt Brown, after coming in to UFC 198 with some high hopes for the future. Demian Maia was the opponent for ‘The Immortal,’ and a win could easily have thrust Brown back in to the title picture,
Matt Brown is having one hell of a time in Brazil…
It’s been a very rough weekend for Matt Brown, after coming in to UFC 198 with some high hopes for the future. Demian Maia was the opponent for ‘The Immortal,’ and a win could easily have thrust Brown back in to the title picture, especially as he was fighting the talented jiu-jitsu specialist in his own backyard of Brazil. As it turned out, Brown appears to have seen a lot more action than just in the octagon.
Before even stepping in to the fight with Maia, Brown was mobbed by crazed fans during his UFC 198 walkout. On the way to the octagon angry fans swung, grabbed and yelled at Brown, with one even hitting the welterweight contender. But the story only got tougher for Matt Brown, as he ended up losing by third-round submission.
The entertaining striker clearly angered fans during the UFC 198 weigh-ins, standing on the scales with his back to the 15,000 strong Brazilian crowd and flipping them off as the stepped away. And still the story gets stranger and more controversial, as news has merged that Brown’s ex-coach Rodrigo Botti assaulted the UFC welterweight in a hotel lobby the day after the event.
Here is the video of Botti being caught by members of Brown’s team and geting a few punches and soccer kicks thrown his way. How nuts was that?
UFC commentator and light-heavyweight veteran Brian Stann confirmed the situation on Twitter:
Random fan runs into hotel, hits Matt Brown, and runs. Matt’s friend catches him. Wow
What Stann was eluding to is that the man with a grudge turns out to be Rodrigo Botti, Brown’s former BJJ coach who accused ‘The Immortal’ of assaulting him during a business negotiation a while back.
Unfortunately for Botti, there’ll likely be a ton of witnesses in this scenario who tell a very different tale.
We’ll keep you updated to this story as it evolves.
![Demian-Maia-vs.-Matt-Brown[1]](http://cdn.lowkickmma.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Demian-Maia-vs.-Matt-Brown1.jpg)
