TORONTO - No arrests were made at UFC 129 but the cage in the middle of the Rogers Centre wasn't the only place to see a fight Saturday night.
A video of an ugly attack in the Rogers Centre stands was posted on YouTube, showing three fans punching and kicking another. The fight sent some fans scattering and resumed before security finally got to the trouble spot. A bloodied fan is eventually led away, his shirt ripped off.
The video, which does not show what ignited the melee, was later removed from YouTube "due to a copyright claim by UFC."
It's not the first fight in the stands at a UFC card or any other sporting event. But UFC president Dana White always makes a point of playing down unrest in the stands at his shows.
"The fans that come into the UFC events, they're good people," White told the Toronto pre-fight news conference last Wednesday. "I always get these questions like "Oh my God, can I bring my girlfriend to the UFC?' Like some huge brawl's going to break out. I always say to them 'Have you ever been to a Red Sox-Yankee game?'
"I mean come on. You go to a UFC fight, it's going to be 55,000 cool people that enjoy watching professional athletes compete."
A spokesman for Toronto police said there were no arrests and "no major incidents" at the mixed martial arts show.
Tom Wright, the UFC's director of Canadian operations, said he planned to meet Blue Jays president Paul Beeston later in the week to discuss any incident reports.
"The initial response that he told me was that there were fewer incidents at our event than there were at opening day for the Blue Jays," Wight said. "That's obviously a good sign."
Overall Wright was happy with the staging of the show, which set a UFC record for attendance (55,724) and gate ($11.5 million).
"By all accounts, I was thrilled by what happened," he said.
