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MMA has always prided itself on being a highly respectful sport. While the UFC often markets its fights around grudges, the hatchet is mostly buried in the octagon after a fight.
Sometimes, though, it seems like UFC fighters simply can’t let their grudges go after a fight is done. On occasion, things have continued after the final buzzer.
Often this is down to some kind of perceived disrespect. Other times it’s because a fighter simply can’t accept that they’ve come out on the wrong end of things.
Whenever it happens, though, while it is entertaining, it can also paint the UFC in a pretty bad light. This means that the fighters involved often have to suffer some repercussions.
With this in mind, here are five times that the action threatened to continue even after a UFC fight had finished.
#5. Anthony Smith vs. Ryan Spann – UFC Fight Night
The most recent entry to this list took place just this past weekend at the UFC Fight Night event. Strangely enough, it occurred in a fight that hardly seemed to have a lot of personal animosity around it going in.
Usually one of the more mild-mannered fighters on the UFC’s roster, Anthony Smith was matched against Ryan Spann in the main event of this UFC Fight Night. He seemed to have a major chip on his shoulder.
Spann hadn’t exactly talked a lot of trash leading up to the fight. Apparently though, the fact that he’d claimed that he didn’t care about Smith’s previous experience, wins or main events got under the skin of ‘Lionheart’ – big time.
When it came to fight time, Smith looked more fired up than he’d ever done before. He took the action to ‘Superman’, engaging him on the feet in a brutal striking war in the first round.
Spann attempted to fire back, but looked outgunned by his more ferocious opponent. When Smith finally dropped him, he wasted no time in finishing him off with a rear-naked choke.
But ‘Lionheart’ wasn’t done there. After referee Herb Dean stepped in to stop things, he decided to stand over Spann and hurl abuse down at him, seemingly not willing to end the fight there.
Spann then leapt to his feet and lunged for Smith, forcing UFC officials to flood into the octagon to separate the two fighters. Cooler heads finally prevailed as they shook hands and buried the hatchet.
Post-fight, though, Smith explained his actions. He stated that due to the length of time he’s spent in the sport, he merely wants his peers to respect him, something he felt Spann hadn’t done leading up to their clash.
#4. Josh Koscheck vs. Paul Daley – UFC 113
UFC 113’s semi-main event featured a major welterweight grudge match between two of the UFC’s bad boys, Josh Koscheck and Paul Daley.
Unfortunately, despite the fight ending climactically in favor of Koscheck, Daley simply wasn’t willing to let the grudge lie – costing him his UFC roster spot in the process.
The two men had engaged in a major war of words coming into the event. Bizarrely, it largely centered around which man “wore the black hat” of a villain better.
This made more sense when it was revealed that the winner would be set to fight the ultimate good guy – UFC welterweight champion Georges St-Pierre – in a title fight later in the year. But it still felt like strange marketing from the promotion.
In the end, though, despite the hype, the fight was largely a damp squib. Koscheck simply outwrestled ‘Semtex’ to take a unanimous decision, and took the opportunity to verbally taunt his British opponent throughout the fight in the process.
That was enough to push Daley over the edge. When the fight ended, he decided to take another swing at his opponent, landing a shocking sucker punch on an unsuspecting Koscheck before referee Dan Miragliotta was able to restrain him.
Naturally, everyone was stunned – including UFC President Dana White, who unceremoniously fired Daley after the event and banned him from ever returning to the UFC.
Sure, Koscheck had definitely been hugely antagonistic, but from a long-term point of view, this was one grudge Daley would’ve been better off letting go.
#3: Fabricio Werdum vs. Travis Browne – UFC 203
When Fabricio Werdum and Travis Browne faced off for the second time at UFC 203, the fight was largely one-sided in favor of Werdum. He basically out-fought ‘Hapa’ in every possible area, resulting in a clear-cut unanimous decision victory.
Evidently, though, nobody gave Browne’s coach Edmond Tarverdyan that memo. He’d already been overheard telling Browne that Werdum “didn’t have sh*t” for him in his corner between rounds – perhaps suggesting that he thought his fighter deserved a win.
Post-fight, when Werdum made a “crying” gesture at a portion of the crowd that were booing, the Armenian-American decided to take action. He attempted to square up to ‘Vai Cavalo’, only for the former UFC heavyweight champion to hit him with a front kick to the chest.
This was enough for mayhem to break loose inside the octagon, with Browne lunging at his opponent and both sets of cornermen – including Werdum’s friend and notorious loose cannon Renato ‘Babalu’ Sobral – looking to get involved.
UFC officials quickly spilled into the octagon to stop things from escalating, and the whole debacle ended with Browne and Tarverdyan – as well as their other team members – being ejected.
This was a truly wild scene and remains one of the only times in UFC history that a coach and a fighter ended up coming to blows inside the octagon. More to the point, it only added to Tarverdyan’s reputation as one of MMA’s most controversial figures.
#2: Joe Riggs vs. Nick Diaz – UFC 57
While the clash between Joe Riggs and Nick Diaz didn’t continue in the octagon after the final buzzer, it’s safe to say that the continuation of their fight elsewhere remains etched in UFC legend years on.
That’s because incredibly, the two welterweight contenders decided to square off in the hospital hours after their initial clash, clearly deciding that nothing had truly been settled in their fight at UFC 57.
The two men had plenty of bad blood going into the bout, not only because of Diaz’s generally abrasive nature but also because of Riggs’ own cocky, trash-talking persona.
When they squared off in the octagon, it was an incredibly close fight to call, with both men getting their fair share of good shots in. In the end, though, despite being rocked in the first round, Riggs was awarded a tight decision by the judges.
The two men did hug post-fight, but the result clearly didn’t sit well with Diaz. And the Stockton native wasn’t about to let up when he saw ‘Diesel’ in a local hospital later that night.
According to Diaz, Riggs instigated the clash, but ‘Diesel’ told a different story.
In a 2013 interview, Riggs claimed he taunted an angry Diaz about suffering back-to-back losses, and when he turned away, Diaz dropped him with a punch to the jaw that knocked half of a tooth out. From there, a wild brawl broke out that lasted for almost five minutes before they were separated.
No footage of the incident exists, but it remains one of the UFC’s most talked-about incidents. The promotion even dedicated an episode of Fight Lore to it in 2020.
#1: Khabib Nurmagomedov vs. Conor McGregor – UFC 229
Naturally, the most infamous instance of a fight continuing in the octagon after the final buzzer remains the unsavory incident that took place after Khabib Nurmagomedov vs. Conor McGregor at UFC 229.
The fight was not only the main event of the biggest-selling pay-per-view in UFC history, but it may also have been the promotion’s greatest ever grudge match, too.
What initially began as a regular rivalry immediately became something else entirely when McGregor responded to some verbal threats from Nurmagomedov by showing up at UFC 223’s media day.
Rather than confront ‘The Eagle’, the Irishman launched a wild attack on a bus carrying the Russian and other UFC fighters. He threw a metal dolly at it and smashed one of its windows.
McGregor was arrested for the incident and charged with numerous crimes. But that wasn’t enough to stop the UFC using it to promote the eventual fight between him and Nurmagomedov at UFC 229.
Evidently, despite putting a complete beatdown on ‘The Notorious’, Khabib remained infuriated by what’d happened. After the fight had ended with him defeating the Irishman with a neck crank in the fourth round, he decided to leap over the octagon fence and attack McGregor’s training partner Dillon Danis.
Before long, all hell broke loose, with UFC officials and security attempting to separate Nurmagomedov and Danis. Incredibly, McGregor began to brawl with Abubakar Nurmagomedov, Zubaira Tukhugov and Esed Emiragaev inside the octagon.
Things got so out of control that once the dust had settled and the brawl had finally been stopped, UFC president Dana White was unwilling to present Nurmagomedov with his UFC lightweight title. There were no post-fight interviews conducted with either fighter.
In the end, both Nurmagomedov and McGregor were suspended and slapped with hefty fines by the Nevada State Athletic Commission. Based on the two men continuing to snipe at one another on social media, nothing was truly settled in the octagon at all.
