The hottest week of the year for UFC is leaving exactly what Dana White wanted: tension, chaos and a constant feeling that anything can happen at any moment.
The press conference held today to promote the UFC event at the White House ended completely out of control after Josh Hokit starred again in another controversial episode, this time verbally confronting both Ilia Topuria and Alex Pereira.
Hokit, who has been building an increasingly aggressive and provocative character for weeks, began to throw comments towards several fighters present on stage. The situation exploded especially when he began to head to Topuria, provoking an immediate reaction from the Spanish-Georgian champion.
Topuria quickly got up from his seat and for a few seconds seemed willing to physically confront Hokit before security intervened. The atmosphere became even more tense when, with tempers already hot, Topuria threw an object towards the area where Hokit was, forcing the security agents to remove the heavyweight from the stage.
Alex Pereira also ended up entering the exchange of statements. Hokit once again insisted on his defiant character, trying to get the attention of all the important names present at the event, something he had already done weeks ago after his performance against Curtis Blaydes.
The general feeling within the UFC environment is that Hokit is trying to become one of the new great villains of the company. His behavior in press conferences, weigh-ins and interviews is generating a lot of noise, although it is also beginning to divide the fans quite a bit.
But if today's conference was chaotic, yesterday's between Khamzat Chimaev and Sean Strickland directly bordered on disaster.
The rivalry between the two had been completely out of control for weeks, but the face-to-face prior to UFC 328 ended up raising the tension even more. From the beginning of the press conference the two were constantly interrupted, with personal insults, family references and increasingly aggressive attacks.
Strickland once again harshly attacked Chimaev, making comments about his relationship with Chechnya and his closeness to Ramzan Kadyrov, while the champion responded by shouting continuously and trying to stop the American from continuing to speak.
Everything ended up exploding during the final confrontation. Chimaev kicked Strickland in front of the entire stage, causing a moment of absolute chaos in which security, members of the UFC and even several police officers present in the venue had to intervene.
Dana White watched the scene visibly frustrated as both teams tried to separate the fighters. Even so, far from lowering the tension, the incident seems to have further increased the expectation around the fight.
The UFC is going through a stage where press conferences have once again become a spectacle in themselves. Between the open war between Chimaev and Strickland and Josh Hokit's increasingly out-of-control character, the feeling is that the company is once again living an era of much more personal and explosive rivalries.
And seeing what has happened in the last 48 hours, no one rules out that there are still some more episodes before the night of the fights arrives.