UFC 315 is being held at the Bell Centre in Montreal on Saturday night. A UFC Welterweight Championship bout between current champion Belal Muhammad and Jack Della Maddalena will headline the mixed martial arts pay-per-view.
Before the fighters go to war in Quebec, Sportsnet took the opportunity to have some of the stars on the card react to a much different fight that took place in the Bell Centre just a couple of weeks ago. The masters of boxing and grappling sat down and watched the Game 3 bench brawl between Tom Wilson and Josh Anderson in the Capitals-Canadiens first-round playoff series.
The two power forwards had one of the most viral moments of the first round as they wrestled and punched each other on the bench as NHL linesman Kyle Flemington held on for dear life, trying to separate the pair.
Transcript of reactions
Aiemann Zahabi: Lacrosse is our national sport, they fight. Hockey’s our national sport, they fight. How could you not love fighting in Canada? Don’t take our kindness for weakness in Canada, boys.
Jasmine Jasudavicius: A good bench brawl.
Alexa Grasso: Oooh.
Belal Muhammad: Oh, that ref’s right in the middle of it. That ref’s trying to be Dana White.
Jack Della Maddalena: Oh, they’re getting into it in the player’s box thing.
Brad Katona: No punches yet.
Belal Muhammad: They got some good grappling, okay.
Alexa Grasso: They’re angry.
Brad Katona: Oh, no. There’s the punches.
Jasmine Jasudavicius: They’re going.
Jack Della Maddalena: That is cool.
Belal Muhammad: How come nobody else is jumping in? Ayy, that’s epic.
Jack Della Maddalena: That’d be the best game to go to, right?
Alexa Grasso: And now all the team is fighting.
Belal Muhammad: I would go to a hockey game for that. The one we went to there was, like, no fights.
Jasmine Jasudavicius: It’s so crazy that I learned that there’s, like a lot more technique to it than people really know.
Sportsnet then asked some of the fighters if they thought they could ever fight on skates.
“I don’t think so,” former UFC Women’s Flyweight Champion Alexa Grasso said. “I wouldn’t risk.”
“These guys kind of went on the bench area, women’s flyweight fighter Jasmine Jasudavicius added. “Maybe if I’m there.”
The lone fighter critical of the technique shown in the clip was the Canadian-born Brad Katona. Katona is scheduled for a bantamweight clash with Kazakh fighter Bekzat Almakhan on the preliminary card.
“Expecting more punches, and then the guy still had his gloves on,” Katona said. “I was like, ‘Ah, come on, man.’ I’m not gonna give them advice on fighting, but I’d take off the puffy gloves.”
Wilson and Anderson’s brawl isn’t the first Capitals-related instance that UFC fighters have reacted to. Last summer, a group watched a clip of Alex Ovechkin knocking out a rookie Andrei Svechnikov during the 2019 playoffs.
“They’re just holding and throwing,” Muhammad said then. “Nonchalant about it. Oh, that was Ovechkin! Oh, this guy’s rocked. You should’ve never stepped up. Hockey fights are worse than Power Slap.”
UFC 315’s main card is set to kick off at 10 pm on Saturday. The Capitals and Carolina Hurricanes will likely have wrapped up Game 3 in their second-round series by then unless the 6 pm puck drop goes deep into multiple overtimes.
