Getty Khamzat Chimaev prepares for his welterweight fight against Gilbert Burns.
UFC superstar Khamzat Chimaev nearly came to blows with Paulo Costa in a heated confrontation.
Ahead of his upcoming clash with Nate Diaz, Chimaev made headlines for an unexpected altercation with former middleweight title challenger Costa on Sep. 5. Costa and Chimaev were both at the UFC Performance Institute in Vegas when they crossed paths with each other. Chimaev interrupted Costa during a grappling training session with Jake Shields, a teammate of Diaz.
Shields, who was alongside Costa, uploaded new footage of the incident in a Sep. 6 tweet, writing, “Here’s another Video of khamzat the fake Swedish gangster pretending he wants to fight He said he wanted to fight then so I opened the cage door but he kept walking away.”
Here’s another Video of khamzat the fake Swedish gangster pretending he wants to fight
He said he wanted to fight then so I opened the cage door but he kept walking away
“What happened with Israel Adesanya ? He f**ked your a**, huh?” Chimaev can be heard saying.
Chimaev’s head coach Andreas Michael of Allstars Training Center in Sweden can be seen in the video wearing a white Blockasset t-shirt standing between the two groups.
As one of Chimaev’s teammates got closer to the training cage door, Shields opened it to invite a potential brawl. When “Borz” did not initiate violence, Costa and the team got back to doing grappling drills while Chimaev was yelling at them from a distance.
“Keep walking away, keep walking away,” Shields said.
Shields followed up with another tweet in the thread: “We go right back to work like professionals while khamzat continues to show off for the camera If he actually wanted to fight he would have ran up in the cage with @BorrachinhaMMA.”
“It was 15 vs 3 but we were ready to throw down regardless because we aren’t fakes,” Shields wrote in the final tweet.
Shields Believes Chimaev Was Simply Putting On a Show
Following the incident, Shields claimed Chimaev was putting on a show for the cameras and did not want to get physical with Costa. He bashed Chimaev for faking the scuffle to promote his name ahead of UFC 279.
“So we run over and start talking s*** and Khamzat keeps going, ‘Let’s fight now, let’s fight now,’ but as he’s saying that he’s walking down the stairs,” Shields told MMA Junkie. “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.”
Costa Said He Wanted To Fight at the UFC PI
Costa expressed his desire for an outing with the rising prospect down the line. The top-ten ranked 185-pound contender reported that he was even willing to scrap it out with Chimaev at the PI gym.
“He called me to talk and I went there, I faced him,” Costa said via MMA Junkie. “He said, ‘Hey Borrachinha, why do you talk about me?’ I said, ‘Man, what did I talk about you? You want to fight me?’ He said, ‘No, no – I want to know what you talk about me.’ I said, ‘Man, I want to fight you. If you beat Nate Diaz, I want to fight you,’ and he froze. He said, ‘OK, so let’s fight now.’ His whole team got in the middle between me and him. Man, this guy is scared. He’s scared as f***.
“Just so you know, Chimaev, I don’t need to have a couple of guys with me. I’m an army of one man. I walk alone and I can beat you alone with just one hand.”