Matt Brown explains cheap shot incident with ex-coach Rodrigo Botti

Matt Brown went to Curitiba, Brazil this past week for UFC 198, and while there he was booed mercilessly, slapped upside the head on multiple occasions, and sucker punched when he wasn’t looking — all of this on top of his fight with Demian Maia.

It was a wild trip for the "Immortal" Matt Brown, who didn’t endear himself to Brazil when he flipped off the fans at the weigh-ins. He ended up losing his fight against Maia. By Monday he was safely back in the States, and -- after a video surfaced of his former coach Rodrigo Botti getting punched in a confusing curbside scuffle -- he appeared on his Great MMA Debate podcast with Damon Martin to explain just what the hell happened out there in Brazil.

"I got up late [on Sunday], come down for lunch and I’m sitting there sipping coffee and suddenly I feel something on the side of my head," he said. "I thought that it was a fan…you know, these fans that were smacking me in the head, that’s what it felt like, right? So I thought maybe a guy was hitting my shoulder a little bit hard and missed. Or maybe I moved at the wrong time or something, and I kind of looked at my coach and was like, ‘what a d*ck – what a dick move.’

He said he then saw a man bolting for the stairs to his right.

"In between me and the stairs was a huge pillar," he said. "So the perpetrator must’ve been spying. There’s no way he couldn’t have known that I was sitting there without actually walking around and looking for a specific person."

After he was struck, Reed Harris, the Vice President of Athlete Development, shot out after the assailant. Bocci had broken through a door in his attempt to flee the scene. According to Brown, Reed, hot in pursuit, busted the glass out the rest of the way with hands, springing after him. Brown followed. Not seeing the man that hit him, Brown stopped and posed for photos with fans.

Meanwhile, Harris and Brown’s friend -- whom Brown said was like "a pitbull off the leash" when he learned it was his ex-coach -- caught up to Botti, who was trying to hail a cab. The footage of what ensued shows Botti’s eventual apprehension by Harris and others.

"Reed Harris is an old-school gangster," Brown said.

The 35-year-old Brown said that no charges have been brought up, and that the lawsuit between him and Botti has been dropped. The UFC had issued a statement on the incident on Sunday.

"UFC is aware that welterweight contender Matt Brown was allegedly attacked today [Sunday] by a former acquaintance at the UFC 198 host hotel in Curitiba, Brazil," the statement read. "UFC has been in communication with local authorities to gather more information relative to the alleged attack, and is reviewing security measures at the hotel.

"Fortunately, Brown was uninjured in the situation and will return home to the United States later today as planned."

Now back in the States with some time to reflect on it, Brown said Botti got his comeuppance.

"Botti got what was coming to him," he said. "This coward of a man got what was coming."