Rising welterweight prospect Namo Fazil had a rough night on Tuesday. At Dana White’s Contender Series Week 2, Brazil’s Kaik Brito knocked him out cold just 12 seconds into the third and final round of their fight, halting his chances of entering the UFC, at least for the time being. However, this wasn’t the only fight the outspoken Kurdish-origin fighter had to deal with that week. In a latest revelation, Fazil has accused Khamzat Chimaev’s teammates of attacking him at the fighters’ hotel hours before his big fight on Tuesday.

Taking to Instagram, ‘Grandson of Salahdin’ revealed that while he was cutting weight for the fight in his hotel room, he suddenly heard a knock on his door. When one of his coaches opened it, 15 Chechens forced their way into the room and attacked Fazil.

“I was in the middle of my weight cut,” Fazil revealed. “I only had about three or four kilograms left to lose. For fights, I cut around 14 kilograms (30 pounds) in total, and I’d already lost more than 10 kgs. Then, while I was in that condition, someone was going to come into my room and attack me. There was a knock at the door. I said to my coach, ‘Could you please open the door?’ They confronted me. My coaches stood up while I was still wrapped in blankets. There were 15 of them, and the 15 people who came were Chechen.

“One of them suddenly came at me and slapped me. Then he slapped me a second time. My coaches were holding me back, saying, ‘Namo, you’re not going to fight.’ They were stopping me because I had a fight. I told him, basically, ‘Be a man. Let me finish my fight first, then we can settle this.'” 

For Fazil, who was preparing for one of the biggest fights of his career, hopefully a ticket into the UFC, the situation was tough. However, the Kurdish fighter didn’t reveal the identity of the attackers, other than claiming they were Chechen and that they were looking to hurt him. The 29-year-old disclosed that after restraining himself for a while, the altercation died down only after police were called in.

“He was saying, ‘Let’s fight now,’ and I said, ‘No, I have a fight. Wait,’” Fazil recalled. “My coaches intervened, and once a scuffle broke out, they became scared and ran off. The police came. There was shouting and commotion in the hotel lobby. At the end of the day, this isn’t a Van Damme movie. There were 15 people. If they really wanted to, they could have done much worse to me. Clearly, they had some kind of objective.” 

While describing the entire incident, Fazil refrained from revealing the exact identity of those involved in the confrontation. However, it wasn’t hard to figure out who he was referring to since one of the attackers had already suggested their involvement in the attack.

Just after the Kurdish fighter suffered a devastating knockout loss on Tuesday night, Khamzat Chimaev’s teammate and middleweight prospect, Baisangur Susurkaev, posted a picture of his hand with the caption, “Left hand 2-0 Namo cryer,” clearly indicating that it was he who slapped the welterweight fighter.

As such, the accusation against the former middleweight champion’s team seems to carry some weight. While many details surrounding their beef remain unclear, it likely had something to do with Fazil’s recent comments about another UFC fighter, Islam Dulatov.

Though Dulatov isn’t directly part of Chimaev’s team and lives in Germany, the model-turned-fighter is of Chechen descent. As such, Fazil’s comments about Dulatov being “feminine” and “female” in the lead-up to his fight against Brito may have angered the team of Chechen fighters who decided to get back at him.

In fact, Dulatov also offered Kaik Brito $5,000 after he knocked out Fazil, suggesting that his comments did rub the Chechen native the wrong way. However, this isn’t the first time Chimaev’s team has found itself involved in an altercation with another fighter.

Khamzat Chimaev and his team involved in heated altercation with Paulo Costa

Ahead of Khamzat Chimaev’s fizzled-out fight against Nate Diaz in 2022, the Chechen had a massive altercation with former middleweight title challenger Paulo Costa. Both had carried lingering animosity toward each other for years, so when they finally came face to face, all hell broke loose.

Reportedly, the Brazilian was training with Jake Shields at the UFC PI when he encountered Chimaev and his team. Soon, colorful words started flying from both sides, and those fighting words eventually resulted in both camps engaging in a brawl at the Performance Institute. Before the altercation could cause any serious damage, some of their teammates and security personnel managed to separate them. However, Costa didn’t pull any punches afterward, calling Chimaev “scared.”

“He called me to talk and I went there. I faced him,” Costa continued. “He said, ‘Hey Borrachinha, why do you talk about me?’ I said, ‘Man, what did I talk about you? You want to fight me?’ He said, ‘No, no – I want to know what you talk about me.’ I said, ‘Man, I want to fight you. If you beat Nate Diaz, I want to fight you,’ and he froze. He said, ‘Okay, so let’s fight now.’ His whole team got in the middle between me and him. Man, this guy is scared. He’s scared as f—k.” 

Though that instance was a little different from what happened with Namo Fazil, it shows that Khamzat Chimaev and his team have a history of confronting fighters over their comments. It might be why Sean Strickland also issued a warning ahead of UFC 328 that he would shoot Chimaev and his team if they attacked him. Thankfully, nothing of that sort happened since knowing the history, the UFC ensured that the two, as well as their teams, were kept in separate hotels to avoid any chance of a confrontation. 

That said, it won’t be a stretch to say that this week’s Contender Series was definitely one of the most chaotic weeks in the program’s history.