According to UFC welterweight contender Matt Brown’s former Brazilian jiu-jitsu coach Rodrigo Botti, his sucker-punch of Brown in the hotel lobby after UFC 198 was actually revenge of a cheap attack he claims Brown and his friends did to him in the past.
Botti, who sucker-punched Brown in the lobby of a hotel in Curitiba, Brazil this past weekend, only to get caught by Brown’s friends and beaten down after he tried running (watch the video of Botti getting beaten down here), spoke with MMAFighting.com to explain his side of the story.
Below is an excerpt from Botti’s conversation with the MMA website, where he explains the back-story behind his decision to sucker-punch Brown in Curitiba this past weekend.
“When you’re cowardly assaulted like I was, you can’t control yourself. This guy destroyed my career, I lost part of my vision because of him, had to do another surgery. I couldn’t sleep normally for 15 months, it changed my entire life. I simply exploded (when I saw him)… He was a coward when he did what he did to me, and I’m satisfied with my attitude now. We are even. Everything could have been prevented if he had admitted he was wrong when he attacked me, or at least called me apologizing. Everybody is entitled to make a mistake, but the problem is that he had a fight coming up with Johnny Hendricks and a win could get him a title shot, so he was afraid of being punished. He decided to lie about it. That’s when it became personal, brother. I would never work with him anymore, but if he apologized, I’d forget it. If people are saying I was a coward against Matt Brown, which I don’t think I was, I’ll say that one cowardly action was paid back with another. But I don’t believe I was a coward.”
