Song Yadong isn’t holding a grudge against Usman Nurmagomedov after the PFL lightweight champion jumped into the cage at UFC Shanghai and nearly assaulted him.
Yadong had just knocked out Umar Nurmagomedov in the main event at the SPD Bank Oriental Sports Center and was celebrating his victory when Usman came over the fence to check on his brother. As Yadong did a celebratory lap, Usman seemed to nearly clock “The Kung Fu Kid” with a spinning elbow.
In a new interview translated from Chinese, Yadong explained what happened from his point of view.
“At the time, I wanted to run around and celebrate a bit,” he said. “I don’t even know where this guy came from, he just stood in front of me and blocked me. Then he shoved me a bit, so I just pushed him aside and kept moving. Watching the slow motion, it looked like he was turning around to throw an elbow or something.”
“But actually, I understand because they are brothers, you know?” he continued. “They didn’t have any animosity towards me, and I didn’t have any animosity towards them. There weren’t any kinds of malicious verbal attacks or anything before the fight. So it’s not like the internet suggested, that he wanted to maliciously attack me or anything.”
“He just thought I was going over to attack him. Because he went to check on his brother and suddenly someone runs over. Like, you’d definitely react that way because everyone can see it in slow motion. His eyes were closed, hands up like this, and then [elbows out].”
It’s extremely fortunate that there wasn’t any serious contact or what should have been one of the biggest wins by a Chinese fighter in front of a home crowd could have erupted into a full on brawl. And for some reason, we don’t think officials over there would agree with Dana White’s laissez-faire attitude towards unsanctioned violence.
But as noted, disaster was averted and nothing went down. To avoid an emotional relative from nearly causing a brawl in the future, maybe there should be a rule or something about not jumping the cage. A rule that gets enforced this time so no one does it again? I dunno, just spitballing here.
