Crowd Gets Furious After UFC Main Event Stoppage; Announcer Hides Under Table

The main event of UFC Fight Night: Yair Rodríguez vs. Jeremy Stephens on Saturday night ended in a no contest after just 15 seconds when an accidental eye poke by Rodríguez on Stephens meant that the American couldn’t continue, even after the allotted five minutes of recovery time. The Mexico City crowd, who were there to cheer on Rodríguez, were not sympathetic in the least to Stephens’s injury. When the fight was called, drinks and other trash rained down on the octagon, forcing not just the exiting Stephens, but also announcer Brendan Fitzgerald to duck for cover.

Here’s the most dramatic video of the post-fight scenes, where Stephens has a full security escort as enraged fans use him for target practice while he hustles out of harm’s way.

And here’s how it looked on the ESPN broadcast, which is less visually striking but includes vivid imagery from the announcing team of Brendan Fitzgerald and Michael Bisping.

“I’m pretty sure I just got Modelo in the face,” Bisping said, before noting that the debris had “progressed from Modelo to ice cubes to bottles.”

“I’m gonna just duck under the table here,” Fitzgerald commented as the projectiles started flying.

For proof that Fitzgerald wasn’t merely joking, here’s video of him continuing to do his job while also taking shelter:

But luckily the play-by-play man wasn’t traumatized by his brush with weaponized beer. Just a short while later, he saw the humor in the whole thing.

Rodríguez vs. Stephens ended in a no contest, but with a strong defensive performance, Brendan Fitzgerald won a unanimous decision against Modelo Especial.