Raulian Paiva laughs at racist attacks after UFC 251 victory: ‘They compared me to a rat’
Photo by Jeff Bottari/Zuffa LLC
UFC fyweight Raulian Paiva suffered some serious racist attacks after beating Zhalgas Zhumagulov at UFC 251, but remains unfazed.
UFC flyweight Raulian Paiva suffered some serious racist attacks after his win over Zhalgas Zhumagulov at UFC 251. On his own Instagram account, the Brazilian fighter shared a picture from a Kazakh profile, in which he is compared to a monkey, but remained unfazed by the whole ordeal.
In fact, Paiva even took the cheap attempts to offend him as jokes, laughing at the whole situation and the comments he received. In an interview with Bloody Elbow, Raulian explained his logic: if he gives in and allows the racists to get under his skin, they will have won, so the 24-year-old will not give them the satisfaction.
“Everything was cool between us, but after I won, some people from his country started harassing me. To be honest, that doesn’t faze me. I don’t really care. Actually, I laughed my ass off. I’m still laughing to this day. I don’t take it to heart. They made lots of other pictures. They compared me to a rat in another one, too.”
According to Raulian, the attacks were coming from multiple Instagram accounts, including from people that could be linked to Zhulmagulov’s team. The way Paiva sees it, Zhalga’s supporters began the attacks out of disappointment after the Brazilian defeated their fighter via unanimous decision in the Octagon, which Raulian believes could have surprised them.
“I went over there to do my job. I did a good job, so to hell with what they are saying now. They only want attention. The more I fight back, the more they’ll come at me, so I just let them talk. If I’m not mistaken, some of them were part of his gym’s crew, but I think that most of them were just fans.”
“They’re just looking for attention since we won the fight.” Paiva continued. “It did not go the way they wanted, they didn’t win. It was a hard fight. Like I said before, I’m not fazed. I don’t care. The more my star shines, the more it will bother them.”
With the win, Raulian Paiva (20-3) put together his first win streak in the Octagon, with a knockout victory over Mark de La Rosa, back in February, before the one at UFC 251. His UFC career did have a rough start, though, with back-to-back losses to Kai Kara-France and Rogerio Bontorin.
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