Matt Brown: Coach 'straight up lied' about alleged beating, case dropped by prosecutor

Matt Brown

A widely circulated story of Matt Brown allegedly beating a now-former jiu-jitsu coach is untrue, the UFC welterweight today told MMAjunkie.

“Yeah, he straight lied,” Brown told MMAjunkie when asked of an alleged incident involving Rodrigo Botti, who accused him of striking him multiple times. “Not even wrong, just straight lied with some of the stuff that he said in public.”

Brown (19-12 MMA, 12-7 UFC) plans to meet with lawyers after his fight with ex-champ Johny Hendricks (16-3 MMA, 11-3 UFC) at UFC 185. The event takes place March 14 at Dallas’ American Airlines Center. He declined to elaborate further on what happened between he and Botti.

“I don’t want my name out being out there and everybody thinking I’m some violent, crazy, I don’t know, coach beater-upper or whatever,” he said. “I’ve got to protect my name; I didn’t do nothing wrong.”

After initial reports of the alleged incident said a police investigation was underway, a rep with the Hilliard (Ohio) Division of Police said the case was pursued as a case of simple assault. Then a city prosecutor declined to move forward after evaluating pictures and a police report.

“It appears there’s not enough evidence to prosecute the case,” Public Information Officer Hyda Slone, citing a note from the prosecutor, told MMAjunkie. She added that the case could be opened at a later time.

A public records request for the police report of the alleged incident is pending.

Botti claimed Brown, whom he was coaching, struck him while he was seated at a desk, aggravating an eye injury for which he had recently had multiple surgeries. After a first attack, Botti claimed Brown attacked him again after he called the fighter “a coward.”

He said the only witness to the incident, Brown’s muay Thai coach, lied to police when he called 911, claiming he pushed the fighter and only one punch was thrown.

“The truth is we were having an argument and he started to yell ‘If you keep talking I can’t f-cking talk’ and repeated that a few times before he went crazy and flipped the glass table of the desk to the floor and came after me with multiple punches on my head while I was seating in the chair,” Botti wrote on his Facebook page.

“I will leave it to the lawyers now and pray that people will find out who is telling the truth and who is (lying), he added. The post was later deleted.

In his own Facebook post, which was later picked up by media outlets, Brown admitted he had struck Botti but was provoked first by a push.

“He put his hands on me first and then cried to the police about it after,” the UFC fighter wrote. “That is a bitch move. Not how 2 grown ass men sort things out… . Hopefully people see through the lies and see the truth of the matter. I’m not perfect but I’m not in the wrong here.”

Brown said today that he’s left Ohio Combat Club in Hilliard, where the alleged incident took place, and now trains at Strong Style Martial Arts and Fitness Center in nearby Independence.

While he couldn’t comment on specifics, he said the alleged incident did not come out of nowhere and was “definitely building for a long time.”

“I think it turned out for the better,” he told MMAjunkie. “I think that coach was bringing things down and being more of a distraction than anything else, so I think it happened for a good reason. Now we’re up here at Strong Style and we’ve got good guys around us all the time.”

For more on UFC 185, check out the UFC Rumors section of the site.