Ailin Perez, Joselyne Edwards give differing accounts of UFC PI altercation ahead of UFC Vegas 82
Ailin Perez had two fights this week.
On Saturday, Perez won a unanimous decision over Lucie Pudilova on the preliminary card of UFC Vegas 82. But prior to that victory, Perez also had a run in at the UFC PI as she told reporters after the fight that the black eye she was sporting into the cage came from an altercation she had on fight week.
“So, pretty much I’m someone just like everyone else. I don’t have a problem personally with anyone,” Perez said at her post fight press scrum (h/t MMA Mania). “What I did was I stated my opinion online about the fight. I didn’t disrespect anyone; I didn’t talk about about anyone. But this irrelevant lady came up to me after I was opinionated about one of her fights, just talking about the performance that she did. And she came to assault me. She did assault me with the intention to make me pull out of my fight, but I’m sorry, she did not achieve it. I won and fought regardless of the assault that took place.
“I want to thank my coach, who was there at the time of the assault, because if it wasn’t for him, I would have had much worse injuries because he was able to take her off me when she was assaulting me,” Perez continued. “And the fight probably would have been off if it wasn’t for my coach, who saved me.”
While Perez did not specifically name the fighter who attacked her, the fighter in question is fellow UFC bantamweight Joselyne Edwards. Edwards also gave MMA Mania a statement about the incident, though her version differs pretty starkly from the one Perez offered.
“While we were fighting, her coach attacked me from behind. He was strangling me so that Ailin would hit me,” Edwards wrote. “Her coach attacked me. I practically had to fight two of them. He did not protect anyone, he started the fight, he was the one who heated things so that the fight would take place, and then he attacked me and was strangling me. Later, when they had already separated me from Ailin, he was still strangling me and did not want to let me go. He never separated the fight; he attacked me while she attacked me.”
And er a third account of the situation, Edwards’ side of the story appears to be more true. MMA Manager Alex Davis witnessed the whole scene and claims that Perez’s coach, Javier Oyarzabal, did more than pull Edwards off Perez, he attempted to choke her unconscious before he was stopped.
“I was sitting on the large octagon inside of the P.I. looking at my phone when I heard yelling to my right,” Davis told MMAMania.com. “When I approached the cage, I saw Ailin and her coach on top of Joselyne, so jumped in to break up the fight. When I went to help out and saw the male coach choking Joselyne with a rear-naked choke, and it was very deep — he was cranking on the choke. If the choke was held on for much longer, it would have been a terrible scene.
“I’m not sure if she was fully unconscious, but she was close,” Davis continued. “When I got the coach off of Joselyne, the coach was ranting and yelling, trying to continue to fight. I was trying to calm Joselyne down because she thought she was still fighting.”
Edwards is 4-3 in the UFC and most recently lost to Nora Cornolle at UFC Paris in September. With her win over Pudilova on Saturday, Perez moved to 2-1 in the UFC. There is currently no information on whether either fighter will face consequences for the altercation.