Matt Brown and his BJJ coach, Rodrigo Botti, got into a bit of an altercation recently at the OCC MMA gym in Ohio. Apparently the police were called and Matt Brown’s brother, who is a lawyer, also entered the situation. It is alleged that Brown assaulted the coach with punches following an argument but Brown denies this although admitted that he did punch the coach only after being pushed himself. Below are the two sides of the story.
Matt Brown posted on his personal facebook account, which dates February 10th, regarding the incident.
“Alright I gotta say something now I suppose. I have WAY bigger fish to fry, but I can’t help it anymore being that my name is being defamed by a former friend. Yes, I punched the him in the face. No, I am not a violent person. I was provoked. I was pushed first. He put his hands on me first and then cried to the police about it after. That is a bitch move. Not how 2 grown ass men sort things out. I’m not going to give the long version and I’m not going to comment a lot about it. I don’t need the stress and I don’t feel like I need to expend the energy on someone so pathetic. I just absolutely have to let everyone know that I was pushed first and also walked away first and have stayed away and tried to let things simmer down (to no avail). So no more OCC for me for now. Hopefully people see through the lies and see the truth of the matter. I’m not perfect but I’m not in the wrong here. That’s it.”
A supposed student of Botti posted the following statement that the coach supposedly put on facebook regarding the incident, however it appears the status has been deleted. Below is part of the statement and you can read it in full here.
“The truth is we were having an argument and he started to yell “If you keep talking I can’t fucking talk” and repeated that a few times before he went crazy and flipped the glass table of the desk to the floor and came after me with multiple punches on my head while I was seating in the chair. I stood up leaning my back against the wall and all I did was cover my eye with one arm and yell “my eye you son of bitch don’t touch my eye” while he was throwing punches in my head. His muay thai coach and only witness didn’t stop him, he slowly walked behind him and said “ok, enough” so he basically stopped because he wanted to. Then the muay thai coach was in between me and him and I said “you are a piece of shit coward because you know I can’t fight back” and I said “If I could we would fight til someone die here, I don’t punch not because I don’t have balls but because I can go blind forever” and as soon as I said that he pushed his friend out of his way and came after me again with another set of multiple punches in the head while I was just covering again. And he left, his friend left with him. I called 911 His friend came back minutes later to pick up his training gear and said ” He fucked up bad, that’s bad, he broke the chain” and left as police was pulling over. I said “You saw everything” and he said “I didn’t see anything” and left. Later that day the brother of the fighter that assaulted called me because he is a lawyer and he asked me “What do you want to make things go smoothly?”. I said “I want to know what you would want if you go blind for the rest of your life, I want what is right and hopefully the judge is gonna say it”. Later that day I got informed that the person that assaulted me and his muay thai coach told police that I shoved him first and he only threw one punch, it was probably a super punch then because made a few bumps in my head, 1 big one and also hurt my eye. Now he is putting this bullshit on facebook saying he defended himself and that he is not a violent person.”
It remains to be seen what actually happened and what the police report will be. Brown faces Johny Hendrick in a little over a month at UFC 185.
