Ailin Perez-Joselyne Edwards Beef: What Happened Between the Two UFC Bantamweights?

UFC 302 is already going to be an exciting one thanks to the headliner between Islam Makhachev and Dustin Poirier. However, we will also get a grudge match between two female fighters in a bantamweight bout between Ailin Perez and Joselyne Edwards. If you’re wondering why the fight has been labeled as a grudge match, well, today our sole focus will only be on that front.

A controversy over an altercation between Ailin Perez and Joselyne Edwards plagued UFC Vegas 82. While the Argentine had her take on what transpired during the incident, the Panamanian shared her side of the things, too. But what was the altercation all about? Let’s find out.

Ailin Perez, with her coach, physically altercated with Joselyne Edwards!

Following her win over Lucie Pudilova, the clear-sighted fans noticed a bruise on Ailin Perez’s face that was there before the fight even commenced. The Argentine fighter claimed that there was a deliberate attempt by Joselyne Edwards to injure her at the UFC Performance Institute so that she could not partake in the fight against Pudilova. The reason behind the altercation, as per Perez, was because she had made some comments about one of Edwards’ previous outings, which appeared to be distasteful to the Panamanian fighter.

“This irrelevant lady came up to me after I opinionated about one of her fights… She did assault me with the intention to make me pull out of the fight,” Ailin Perez stated at the post-fight pressers. However, Joselyne Edwards refuted the Argentine’s statements and claimed that her fellow bantamweight fighter and her coach, Javier Oyarzabal, ganged up on her as she felt getting choked by the Argentine fighter’s coach.

“While we were fighting, her coach attacked me from behind. He was strangling me so that Ailin would hit me,” Joselyne Edwards told MMA Mania. The altercation between the two females turned into a 2-0n-1 handicap fight, and the Panamanian allegedly had to fight both Perez and her coach at the same time.

“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,” Edwards added. Despite both of her presenting two conflicting accounts of the altercation, an eyewitness would later pop up and draw how the situation played out, siding with what Jocelyn Edwards had to say.

MMA manager busts the myth surrounding the Perez-Edwards altercation

Longtime MMA manager Alex Davis happened to have been present when the two aforementioned bantamweight were engaged in fisticuffs. As far as what he witnessed, he was occupied with his phone when he heard someone yelling near the cage inside the PI. Just like Joselyne Edwards confessed, Ailin Perez and her coach were all over the Panamanian fighter. Davis even jumped in to help Edwards when he saw Javier Oyarzabal applying a chokehold on the 28-year-old.

“I was sitting on the large Octagon inside of the P.I. looking at my phone when I heard yelling to my right. 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,” Alex Davis also told MMA Mania.

Meanwhile, when Ailin Perez made an appearance on ‘The MMA Hour’ after her UFC Vegas 82 win, she threatened to take legal action against Joselyne Davis. But the Argentine hasn’t gone down that route. Regardless, they’ll get their shot to settle their differences and the intense beef on June 1. Because of their history, the fight is going to be even more engaging for the UFC masses.