Many things go on behind the scenes for fighters during a UFC fight week.
Among them is an informal meeting with the TV crew to discuss training camp, preparations for the fight, the opponent and other potential talking points for the broadcast.
[autotag]Diego Sanchez[/autotag] has been through many of those over the years, to be certain. But at UFC 253 this past September on “Fight Island” in Abu Dhabi, ahead of his fight against Jake Matthews, Sanchez brought along his coach, Joshua Fabia, as well as his “Ultimate Fighter 1” castmate Stephan Bonnar, who was in his corner for the fight with Fabia.
And Fabia and Bonnar decided to let the cameras roll – not just during Sanchez’s very standard Q&A session with the broadcast team – including play-by-play voice Jon Anik, analyst Paul Felder, roving reporter Megan Olivi, and pre- and post-fight analyst Angela Hill – but when Fabia decided to take over the meeting to get a few points across about his client.
Thursday, Sanchez posted two lengthy clips on Instagram showing pretty much the whole thing.
“I never planned to post or share but my name and legacy is on the line …” Sanchez posted on Instagram with the videos.
Draw your own conclusions if the timing of the videos’ release by the fighter seems odd. Wednesday, it was reported Sanchez (30-13 MMA, 19-13 UFC) was out of his fight against former teammate Donald Cerrone (36-15-1 MMA, 23-12-1 UFC) next month. The fight was expected to be Sanchez’s retirement bout – but he’s also been at odds with the UFC over what he’s implied are respect issues at the top, not just on the broadcast.
Fabia insisted he wasn’t there to lecture the broadcast team about past Sanchez fight calls. But frankly, if it wasn’t an attempt at a lecture, we at the Blue Corner aren’t quite sure what else to call it.
Fabia’s key takeaways seemed to be that Sanchez (30-13 MMA, 19-13 UFC) hasn’t been treated fairly by the broadcast teams calling his fights – and that Fabia himself hasn’t been respected by the fanbase, which he implied was the fault of the broadcast team.
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“Real quick, guys, ’cause you don’t know who the hell I am,” Fabia said to start after after Sanchez’s meeting was over (just past the 9-minute mark in the first video below). “You guys have heard a lot of sh*t talk and all the good stuff. Let’s just cut the bullsh*t on the commentating and the low blows on this guy – no trying to turn the narrative that he’s f**king up his legacy and all that weird stuff. Let’s just keep it fair.
“You want some video? Contact me and I’ll send it to you. You want to know what’s going on? You want to actually talk to the people doing it? You might have to actually f**king talk to me. And coming at (Stephan Bonnar) like he’s going to know all this sh*t? He ain’t. He hasn’t been there the whole time. So if anybody needs to actually get those answers, you will have to speak to me.
“And to do that, probably allowing the media to turn the narrative on the guy that’s trying to help people here – and when you respect these two legends, it seems a little disrespectful that you don’t recognize they respect me. And if you’re going to be the one telling the narrative, that’s on you when I’m getting sh*t on by the public, by millions of people. If you’re going to be here leveraging off of all this, notice I’m on the end of the sh*tty stick here, and none of you have stood up for anybody that needed to be stood up for. And that’s real. You guys are like the tough guys, and all this stuff …”
At that point, Felder had little choice but to jump in on Fabia.
“Man, I don’t know what the f**k you’re talking about,” Felder said. “… It’s not my job to talk about what the public is talking about outside. It’s my job to talk about this athlete and his performance in the cage. That’s it.”
And while Fabia insisted he understood what Felder was saying, it wasn’t long before he had the topic back on him.
“I just don’t feel like the past couple fights, this man has gotten a fair end of the stick,” Fabia said. “And sure as sh*t I sure haven’t, either – ’cause nobody’s actually talked to me, met me, moved with me. Yet there’s a whole lot of sh*t talked about me, and discrediting this man’s opinion on what he knows.”
In the second video, a continuation of the first, Fabia goes on with his take on the broadcast crew. And throughout the whole ordeal, Anik, Olivi, Hill, Felder and others try to get him to understand that no one has been disrespecting Sanchez or Fabia on the broadcasts … that they can’t control what people are saying about them on social media … and that, frankly, strolling in to go off on them the way he was doing was pretty disrespectful.
Sanchez lost his UFC 253 fight against Matthews by unanimous decision. The fight before that, he won by disqualification when Michel Pereira hit him with an illegal knee in front of his home fans in New Mexico.
Of the few times Sanchez himself got a few words in while Fabia was making his pitches, he referenced the call from Brendan Fitzgerald and Daniel Cormier at the Pereira fight.
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“My last fight, the commentary was horrible about me, man,” Sanchez said. “They disgraced me in my hometown, man. They were calling me a chicken, Daniel Cormier was saying how I was drooling at the mouth. There was a lot going on, man.”
To be sure, Cormier did reference Sanchez’s mouth right out of the gate – but in a positive light, choosing to say he was excited for the fight.
“Diego was bubblin’ … he was spittin’ all over the place … he is ready … to … go,” Cormier said on the broadcast, right before the bell to start the fight. “From the start, this is going to be crazy.”
If you’ve run out of half-hour sitcoms to binge, these two clips take up about the same amount of time. We’ll let you check them out and form your own opinions.
https://www.instagram.com/tv/COQvEHQjA7-
https://www.instagram.com/tv/COQyWJjDo3u
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