Artem Lobov explains the odd origin of the UFC 229 post-fight melee

Two men have an extraordinary fight at the highest levels of mixed martial arts, ever, and it gets X coverage. One them leaps out of the cage to engage in the kind of shoving that you can find every weekend in every nightclub, and it gets 8X coverage.

There was a post-fight melee at UFC 229 that was hopefully the final chapter in a months-long confrontation between two teams. Until now the rough outlines have been understood to be:
•Khabib Nurmagmomedov and camp members corner SBGi’s Artem Lobov, and have words, that got a degree physical, over a perceived slight;
•Conor McGregor hears about it, gathers a bunch of his camp members, fly to the USA from Ireland on a chartered jet, and throw a dolly at a fighter bus;
•The two are contract to fight; and,
•They fight, Nurmagomedov wins, and vaults the Octagon.

Lobov appeared recently on Ariel Helwani’s MMA Show on ESPN, and explained for the first time publicly how it all started. He said McGregor and Nurmagomedov were cool with each other. But then the Dagestani called the Irishman a … chicken.

Wait, WAT? Lobov explains.

It might not sound very serious to you guys, but just so you know, ‘chicken’ is one of the biggest insults you can give a man in Russia, said Lobov, as transcribed by Simon Samano for MMAjunkie. In fact, if you call someone a chicken in Russia, that is a person that gets raped in prison – in male prison. That’s what a chicken is in Russia. And Khabib knows that, and everybody knows that. It is a very, very, severe insult.

Of course, me knowing the severity of this insult, I had to respond in a hard way. And I think anybody would’ve done the same. If I didn’t do that, then what kind of friend am I? You know what I mean? Of course, my response was pretty harsh, but I spoke facts. I talked about Khabib himself pulling out of fights all the time and the fact that Conor has never pulled out. And I said how could he call him a chicken when he’s the one pulling out all the time but Conor has never pulled out?

Look, it was a harsh response, but given the situation, I thought it was an appropriate response. And I didn’t see how I could not respond that way. And to be honest, if I was asked 100 times in the same interview the same question, my response would’ve been the same, even knowing what has happened since then.

Then Lobov was in a hotel hallway with a UFC PR person when Nurmagomeov approached, walked away, and returned with members of his camp.

I’m kind of taken aback by all of this, said Lobov. … He kept asking me the same thing: ‘Why did you say that?’ And I kept repeating the same thing. I said, ‘Look, you called my brother a chicken. How could I not respond to you? If someone called your brother a chicken, you probably would’ve responded the same way.’ And he just kept saying, ‘None of your business. Why did you call me that?’ Over and over again. And I explained to him, ‘Look, I didn’t say that to you directly. I said that in response to you calling him a chicken.’ And that was it. That’s how that all happened.

The moral of the story is simple – don’t call a Russian a chicken.