Diego Brandao leaves cage during wild fight in Russia, loses bout

All sorts of strange things happened in ex-UFC fighter Diego Brandao’s fight in Dagestan today.

Ex-UFC fighter and TUF 14 winner Diego Brandao is no stranger to strange occurrences. Despite being a UFC-level fighter, he ended up leaving the promotion after an arrest for assault and has competed with EFN Fight Nights Global in Russia for the last year. He won his first two bouts there, and was matched up with Akhmed Aliev for his third. It ended up being weird.

You can watch the whole video above, but the fight seemed to start getting strange with about 1:40 left in the second round. The fighters are on the ground, with Brandao biting Aliev’s ear. That’s not 100% clear, but that’s what it looks like. Right after that, Aliev headbutted Brandao in the chest. The ref separated them, but Aliev postured up and threw some strikes so Brandao threw an illegal upkick during the fracas.

As soon as Brandao stood up, he walked over to the door of the cage and asked to be let out. The fans started throwing bottles garbage into the cage, so Brandao just jumped over the cage and walked out of the fight.

The ref tried to get Brandao to stay before that, but he didn’t. So when was finally coaxed back out, he found out that the referee had awarded Aliev a TKO victory. The ref was apologetic, but Brandao is the one that walked out so there isn’t much he could do.

Just another day in MMA!