Khamzat Chimaev and Paulo Costa were involved in a confrontation at the UFC’s Performance Institute in las Vegas yesterday, and two videos showing what happened have now emerged on YouTube.
Former UFC fighter Jake Shields was in a perfect place to see how it all went down as he had been helping to coach Paulo Costa that day, and he told MMAJunkie what happened.
“I was there this morning working out with Paulo Costa, going over some techniques and just drilling, and all of a sudden Khamzat starts yelling at us and cussing Paulo like, ‘Well, you want to fight?’” Shields said. “We look over, and it’s him and like 10 dudes.
“So Paulo jumps up and starts talking shit. I run over to back up Paulo because I don’t know if they’re trying to jump him, right? There were a couple of guys, so I wasn’t sure if they were going to jump him. There were a couple of guys that we didn’t recognize.
“So we run over and start talking shit and Khamzat keeps going, ‘Let’s fight now, let’s fight now,’ but as he’s saying that he’s walking down the stairs. It seemed like it was kind of more of an act for the cameras than anything. I guess someone said afterward that he was scoping us out for 10 minutes. If he wanted to fight Paulo, he would’ve run in there and started swinging on him, not stood outside the cage and say, ‘Let’s fight right now. Let’s fight right now.’
“It seemed kind of a weak thing. I guess that’s why he was upset because Paulo called him a fake gangster, and that was a perfect example of him being a fake gangster.”
The undefeated Chimaev has fought at 185lbs twice already in the UFC, so it’s possible that these two could one day settle their differences, but for now ‘Borz’ has a big fight coming up on Saturday night against Shield’s long-time friend and training partner Nate Diaz in the main event of UFC 279, while Costa is just coming off a unanimous decision victory over Luke Rockhold at UFC 278 last month.
