Khamzat Chimaev said on Sunday he would be willing to settle things outside the arena after his RAF 10 wrestling match with Dillon Danis collapsed into a post-match brawl. Chimaev had already won the bout by a rapid-fire pinfall in the first period, but the scene turned violent almost immediately after the referee tried to separate them.
Danis held onto Chimaev’s foot as the official stepped in, and Chimaev kicked him in the leg a second later. That was enough to send the stage into chaos, with dozens of people flooding the area as RAF officials tried to keep control. Chimaev later broke his silence after leaving the arena immediately following the melee, and his message was blunt: “What should I think? Stupid guys do stupid things.”
He did not back away from the idea of another confrontation. “I accept something like that,” Chimaev said, referring to a street fight, before adding that Danis “knows he wasn’t my level in wrestling so he felt that and then he tried to sub me.” He also said, “If he did a submission on me, I’m never going to train again,” and described Danis as “a weird guy, honestly,” while saying, “You know I try to hold myself but this idiot do stupid things.”
The ugly finish stood in sharp contrast to the mood before the match. Earlier in the week, Chimaev had already invited Danis to a street fight, saying, “I was thinking winning the match then outside I want to ask him let’s go. Let’s dance outside,” and, “I asked him before like [let’s] do a street fight, you know?” He later made the offer more explicit: “Whenever he wants, just send me a message [with] location wherever you are and so I’m open.”
That leaves RAF with the hardest question from a night that started as a wrestling match and ended as a brawl: whether either man will be allowed back. Officials had not made a decision on whether the melee could keep Chimaev or Danis from returning to the promotion, and the answer now matters as much as the result itself. For a pairing that looked playful at the pre-match press conference, the aftermath has made the next step feel less like sports and more like discipline.
