DC inside the UFC 229 melee: Funniest $#!@ I’ve ever seen

Champ champ Daniel Cormier spoke recently with the media, and recounted what it was like to be in the thick of the UFC 229 post-fight melee between the camps of UFC lightweight champion Khabib Nurmagomedov, and former champ champ Conor McGregor.

Cormier offered a historical anecdote about how tight Nurmagomedov’s team is.

One time I … hurt his neck in practice and they were about to kick my ass, said Cormier. Like seriously, they all started standing up and they were kind of surrounding me. … Those guys don’t play around, man. They got up. They actually got up. I was like, ‘Hey man, don’t ever come in here and jump me. It’s my gym.’ But they don’t mess around, man. Khabib does not play around and he is honestly the crown jewel of that circle. They love him and rightfully so. We all do, too.

And on the other side were Conor’s Irish camp that flew across the Atlantic in a jet to throw a dolly at a bus full of fighters.

When DC’s AKA teammate Nurmagomedov vaulted the Octagon and near landed on a Conor camp member, the heavyweight’s first impulse was to all go to war.

The crazy thing is, we’re fighters, so the initial reaction is like, ‘Oh my God, I’m gonna go help my teammate. I’m gonna go fight,’ said Cormier. But then I was like wait a minute, what am I thinking? So when I finally get to Khabib, he’s going crazy. It was the funniest s*** I’ve ever seen, honestly.

“For me, it sucks that it was in front of all these people, but it was a whole bunch of dudes just kind of fighting and acting crazy. It was like, ‘What are you guys doing?’ It’s like every city in every country every Saturday in some street bar – or a club – this is going on. It just happened between a whole bunch of Russian guys and a bunch of Irish guys in front of millions of people. So for me, I had to kind of separate the idea that I was kind of laughing to try and to go like, ‘guys we are probably in front of the biggest viewership we’ve ever had.’

(Security guards) have Khabib. He sees me, ‘This is my captain. Let him talk to me.’ I said, ‘Yo.’ He goes, ‘What?’ I go, ‘What the f*** is going on? What are you doing?’

He goes, ‘I want my belt.’ I go, ‘OK, OK, just relax.’ He goes, ‘Just give me my belt.’ So I go, ‘Guys, let’s just take him back in the cage, we’ll get his belt, and we’ll get out of here.’

However, UFC president Dana White wisely had other plans.

He goes, ‘People are going to throw stuff into the Octagon, and it’s going to get bad,’ recounted Cormier. ‘It’s going to get ugly in here.’

So Khabib left the Octagon without his belt, and as predicted, the crowd pelted the group with what was at hand. When they finally got to the locker room, Cormier had a simple question for his little buddy Nurmagomedov.

What was the desired outcome there? Cormier asked. Did you want to step on his head? Like, what did you want to do? What, in your mind, were you wanting to accomplish? Were you going to drop kick him? Were you going to double-kick him? What were you doing?

Nurmagomedov replied succinctly.

Brother, I don’t know,” he said. “I lose my mind.

Cormier could not but agree. “I know you did, DC replied.

The melee has generated a lot of bad press, but unlike McGregor’s bus attack, no one was hurt and no weapons were used (although a leaping Nurmagomedov is kind of a living weapon). Cormier offered a sanguine summation.

It’s no black eye for the sport, man, he said. We fight. That’s what we do — we fight. You got a lot of very smart, educated men in this game, but sometimes emotion drives the ship. And on that night, emotions drove the ship. This fight was kind of built in a very bad place.

“I know during the build up, he wasn’t building a fight. He was just getting madder, and madder, and madder. And Conor is still just building. So it was just that they were on two different wavelengths.

Cormier defends his heavyweight title vs. Derrick Lewis at 230 on November 3, 2018 at Madison Square Garden in New York City, New York.

Transcription via Steven Marrocco for MMAjunkie and Marc Raimondi for MMA Fighting.