MMA Fighter DQ'd After He Refused to Stop Punching His Opponent After He'd Won

Friday's TKO 37 got a lot of attention earlier this week when an odd weigh-in photo of Jo Vallee and Strahinja Gavrilovic hit Twitter, as Sportsnet's James Lynch captured below. While most fans saw the snapshot as nothing more than an awkward candid, there was evidently a great deal of bad blood hiding therein.

After 50 seconds of pawing between the fighters, Gavrilovic clobbered Vallee with a right hook that scored a clean knockdown, with Gavrilovic going to the mat for the finish. He landed a few more punches before the referee tried to pull him off. Under most circumstances, that would have led to the victory by knockout, but unfortunately, Gavrilovic continued swinging, not stopping until the ref had dragged him across the cage.

That dangerous display ended up costing Gavrilovic the fight, with the ref overturning the result to a disqualification win for Vallee at 0:59 of the first round.

This angered Gavrilovic even more, as Karolyne D. Leblanc of RDS captured the Canadian shouting his way into the backstage area and shouting expletives (warning: NSFW language):

It was an ugly scene in Montreal and a bad ending to an otherwise solid regional show. Gavrilovic will likely face some sort of suspension for this, but precedent suggests it won't be an especially long one.