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Jorge Masvidal and Leon Edwards Get in Brawl Backstage After UFC on ESPN+ 5
Jorge Masvidal and Leon Edwards got into a fight backstage after UFC on ESPN+ 5 concluded. ESPN reports that the two ended up in an altercation following Masvidal’s win over Darren Till in the main event of the card, which took place on Saturday night.
According to the site, Masvidal was doing an interview backstage when Edwards walked by and directed some comments to him. Masvidal walked away from the interview and confronted Edwards, which led to Masvidal punching Edwards in the face a couple of times. The two fighters qere separated and Edwards suffered a cut under his left eye. Local police went to the fighters’ hotel in London in order to investigate the situation.
Masvidal told ESPN, “I’m doing my interview, and this hooligan comes by, saying stuff like, ‘July, you’ll get your ass kicked in July.’ I go, ‘Maybe. Whatever. Maybe I want to kick your ass in April. Maybe I don’t even want to fight you in the Octagon because it’s not worth a training camp, I’ll just fight you right here because you’re a scrub.’ I said, ‘Just say it to my face, like a man. You’re saying it as you walk away. We’re both men.’ I had my hands back to signal I’m not coming here with problems. But he put his hands up — it’s on video — and walks towards me. Well, where I’m from, you do that, you’re going to punch me in the face. And that’s not going to happen.”
Masvidal added that he felt Edwards had “threatened my life,” noting, “I was scared. It might not have looked it, because I’m cold-blooded, but I was scared out of my life. I said, ‘This hooligan is here and is going to assault me.’ He shouldn’t have done that and walked towards me like he was going to punch me. I got the first one in. Am I going to be in trouble because I got the first one in?”
Edwards’ team said they are not pressing charges and added, “Leon is fine. We will cooperate with the UFC as they investigate the matter.”
Asked about the matter, UFC president Dana White said, “I can’t even believe that this happened. We need to do a much better job of making sure this s**t doesn’t happened at any of our events.”
Edwards has since posted to Instagram and addressed the incident, accusing Masvidal of “sneaking your shots in when you could” and adding, “But now you’re f**ked. If security wasn’t there you wouldn’t have made it back to the US, I’ll see you soon.”
