Paulo Costa, Khamzat Chimaev Have Altercation at UFC Performance Institute

Things are heating up ahead of Khamzat Chimaev’s first headlining appearance in the Ultimate Fighting Championship.

On Monday, Chimaev was involved in an altercation with former middleweight title challenger Paulo Costa at the UFC Performance Institute in Las Vegas. Costa, who was training with Jake Shields at the facility, posted a reaction and video of the incident on his YouTube channel. Shields is a training partner of Nate Diaz, who is Chimaev’s opponent in the UFC 279 main event.

“I met Chimaev there, and man, he was scared,” Costa said on his YouTube channel. “The guy stood there and he froze. He froze. I actually was not surprised. As I said before, cupcake Chechen, gourmet Chechen is a bully with small guys.”

Costa added that he told Chimaev that he would like to fight the Allstars Training Center product if he is victorious against Diaz on Saturday. The altercation primarily consisted of both fighters yelling across the room at one another. Chimaev was accompanied by a group, which Costa pointed out in his reaction.

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“He called me to talk and I went there, I faced him. 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—k.”

At the end of the incident, Chimaev can be heard shouting “Who’s the gangster now? You’re playing like a kid now.”

Costa, meanwhile, seemed to be more amused than anything by the entire situation.

“Just so you know, Chimaev, I don’t need to have a couple of guys with me,” he said. “I’m an army of one man. I walk alone and I can beat you alone with just one hand.”

Shields later provided his own account of the situation in an interview with MMAjunkie.com:

“I was there this morning working out with Paulo Costa, going over some techniques and just drilling, and all of a sudden Khamzat starts yelling at us and cussing Paulo like, ‘Well, you want to fight?' Shields said. “We look over, and it’s him and like 10 dudes.

“So Paulo jumps up and starts talking s—t. I run over to back up Paulo because I don’t know if they’re trying to jump him, right? There were a couple of guys, so I wasn’t sure if they were going to jump him. There were a couple of guys that we didn’t recognize.

“So we run over and start talking sh*t and Khamzat keeps going, ‘Let’s fight now, let’s fight now,’ but as he’s saying that he’s walking down the stairs. 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.”

A different view of the altercation has since been posted by The MacLife: