Cody Gibson 'embarrassed' by streetfight video and 'Google me' incident
When UFC 178 ended just more than a week ago, bantamweight fighter Cody Gibson was a little down in the dumps. He battered Manny Gamburyan for the biggest part of two straight rounds, only to get caught in a fight-ending guillotine choke just seconds from the close of round two.
After the loss, Gibson decided to stay in Las Vegas for a few extra days to visit with a friend of his from the area. On his last night there, Gibson and his friend opted to go out for a night on the town to grab some drinks — and what happened next is something the UFC bantamweight never could have predicted.
Gibson says he was on the patio of a local Las Vegas bar when another man outside started talking belligerently to him, and the next thing Gibson knew, the two were shouting at each other and squaring off in the middle of a crowd. Of course, in this technological age, it took a fellow patron about two seconds to decide to record the altercation just in case anything was about to happen.
And it did.
"He kept egging me on, and that's when I told him, 'I'm a UFC fighter, you don't want to fight me, I don't want to fight you.' I think that in retrospect was not the best idea because I think that made him want to fight more. He pushed me and once he pushed me I kind of lost it and started taunting him, like I'm going to hurt this guy. Luckily, that didn't happen."
Gibson says he tried his best to warn the other guy that the chances were this situation was going to end badly for the both of them. It only escalated from there, and Gibson says eh knew he was in for a fight, whether he wanted one or not.
"He started saying I'm not in the UFC or 'you're full of crap,' and that's when I told him to Google me. I feel like an a--hole now. Like, 'Oh my god, why I did I say that?'" Gibson said. "Then I was looking off to the side 'cause I didn't think anything was going happen. He was just standing there kind of talking crap to me, and then he punched me right in the face pretty hard.
"Luckily, I didn't throw any punches; I just double-legged him, and his friends kind of jumped and grabbed my legs, and then it got broken up and it was pretty much over."
It didn't take long for the video to end up on TMZ with Gibson's name splashed all over it. The "Google me, b---h" line that Gibson uttered was the headline of the day Monday, but Gibson regrets all of it from start to finish.
While he acknowledges drinking at the bar, Gibson says he was in no way there to irritate another patron or try to look for a fight just for kicks and grins. But once he was pushed, Gibson says he kicked into fight mode, and there was no going back at that point.
"I'm glad everything went down the way it did," Gibson said. "I didn't throw any punches, I just kind of defended myself. The video kind of makes me look like I was instigating it more than it probably was. I didn't start instigating anything until he pushed me. By that time, I was pretty much down to scrap at that point. I'm embarrassed by the whole thing. I wish I would have responded better and just got out of there.
"I don't know why he had a problem with me. We were out on the porch of this place and they had all these oversized games out there like chess and other games you could play. I don't remember exactly why he had a problem with me, he just started to talk, you know how it is at a bar. I just wish I recognized right away that this guy was looking for trouble and just walked away. I had been drinking, too, so I wasn't thinking clearly, but I definitely was not looking for a fight. Even when he hit me, I was like, 'Let's just take this guy down and maybe I'll submit him.'"
After the fight, Gibson says security at the bar escorted the other guy and his friends from the premises and told Gibson that he wasn't at fault for the altercation. The police were never alerted, he says, and if not for this video that landed in the hands of the paparazzi site, no one would have been the wiser.
Gibson says he wanted nothing more than to profusely apologize for the incident while hoping that it doesn't cost him his job in the UFC.
"You see things happen to MMA fighters all the time, and you're always scratching your head like, 'How do they find themselves in this predicament?' When I first heard of the TMZ report ... I got that sick feeling in my stomach like, 'Am I going to get cut from the UFC?'" Gibson said. "My manager doesn't seem to think so; they're pretty confident in that. I'm hoping they're right, but I'm not 100 percent sure yet."
