A 20-year-old UFC employee was reportedly fired for allowing a UFC fighter to appear on the UFC Vegas 5 broadcast with a separatist flag.
UFC middleweight Edmen Shahbazyan donned an Artsakh flag ahead of his UFC Vegas 5 main event bout against Derek Brunson — an aesthetic choice that caused international backlash from Turkish and Azerbaijani embassies around the world.
The Republic of Artsakh, formerly known as the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, is a breakaway state in the South Caucasus.it operates as a de facto independent state with an Armenian ethnic majority established on the basis of the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast of the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic.