Bad blood between former UFC fighter Jimi Manuwa and the man who KO’d him into retirement Alexander Rakic turned into a brief physical confrontation following UFC Fight Night 208 in London on Saturday night.
“Jimi Manuwa, you piece of s***,” Rakic said in a Twitter video. “You son of a b****, what a p**** move you did last night on me. Guys, I would just like to let you know after the event at UFC London security was escorting me to the transfer back to the hotel and ‘Mr. Still Sleep’ was sitting in my row at the end of the row so I needed to pass him by. I passed by and he talked to me, something, I didn’t really pay attention. First and second, I have nothing to do with that guy. For me, this is over, so I start to turn away and he sucker punched me.
“Even in that close range, he couldn’t catch my head. I think he hit me with the forearm on my neck. The security was so fast here and they separated us. What a f****** p**** move. You knew that I’d be alone in London by myself. You knew that I had surgery nine weeks ago and you did this. You are such a bad, bad loser and I want people to know what a piece of s*** you are. I’m going to stay in your head forever. I retired you, I knocked you out, and the world saw that. So happy retirement, ‘Mr. Sleep.’”
Manuwa, who was knocked out in just 42 seconds with a head kick by Rakic in what proved to be the final fight of his career back in 2019, has since responded to Rakic and clearly has no regrets about attacking his rival.
“Hey Rakic, instead of keeping it professional you chose to talk s*** online so I told you I will slap you when I see you,” Manuwa wrote. “I saw you.”
Manuwa has also given his own version of how the altercation unfolded.
“It wasn’t a sucker-punch, we were face-to-face and I slapped him and he moved away and did nothing,” Manuwa told bjpenn.comt. “The security came and that was the end of it and I didn’t make a scene. I told him I was going to slap him when I saw him and that is what I did… He was walking past and I said to him ‘what are you saying now?’ and he was acting all confused. He tried to keep walking so I slapped him and he was like a fox in the headlights. He didn’t say anything after.”
Manuwa’s issue with Rakic appears to stem from a brief interaction he had with a fan last year in which he responded to a question by saying, “one fight I’d want back is @rakic_ufc.”
Rakic was then less than charitable with his response, and that crossed a red line as far as Manuwa was concerned.
“He came back and said ‘oh I knocked you out, do you need some money off the 50 bags I earned?’ Or he sends stuff he bought and says he bought it using the money he got from knocking me out. Just being proper disrespectful and I said to him, ‘when I see you keep the same energy’ and that’s it. I just had to give him what he deserves for acting like a troll and a keyboard warrior online.”
