The UFC president wants to make it clear that everything is fine between Chimaev and the promotion, despite ‘Borz’ continuing to sit on the sideline for over half a year.
Don’t believe the media when they tell you there’s something strange going on with Khamzat Chimaev and the UFC.
That’s the resounding message Dana White is sending in a new Instagram post that takes aim at this very site and our very factual reporting. We reported earlier this week that “Borz” was in the middle of a serious social media shakeup: the Chechen fighter recently unfollowed everyone on Twitter except UAE MMA pioneer Tam Khan and accused human trafficker Andrew Tate.
Yes, that lengthy list of Twitter unfollows included all UFC brass and official UFC accounts: president Dana White, matchmakers Sean Shelby and Mick Maynard, etc. etc.. Even Darren Till was de-twitted.
White must have seen the story and looked into it, but he didn’t look into it right. He posted a screenshot of Khamzat’s Instagram followers, which remain normal, and not his Twitter followers, which is what we were talking about. Then he claimed we got it wrong.
“This is the ‘media.’ I could literally do this every day with almost every story that’s written,” White declared. “Everything these people write is total and absolute bulls—t.”
Hey, we know Dana White is more of an Instagram guy these days, so we understand how he got things twisted. It’s okay. We forgive him for the mistake he made, and for the wild accusations against us.
White added an Instagram story showing a video chat with Khamzat Chimaev to prove they’re still friendly. “So f—in tired of the FAKE NEWS,” he wrote over a screenshot. “Don’t believe ANY of this BULLS—.”
That bull would be the insinuation that there is a growing rift between the UFC and Khamzat Chimaev. And look, we’re not the ones jumping to conclusions regarding their relationship. We’ve just been pointing out that Chimaev hasn’t fought since September 2022, which is 8 months ago. He still has no fight lined up right now, and may not until the UFC returns to Abu Dhabi in October.
We’ve watched him go into a couple of different camps in preparation for a fight: in Dubai, and in Thailand. He seems ready to fight! So what’s the deal? In a recent interview, White suggested Chimaev had ‘personal stuff’ preventing him from fighting.
“That’s on him,” White told TSN’s Aaron Bronsteter. “He’s got stuff going on in his personal life. That’s not because we’re not getting a fight.”
“I have no problems with fights,” Chimaev tweeted in response. “If they gave me a fight, I would have fought a long time ago, I did so many training camps and not one fight, the problem is definitely not with me, prepared in Dubai then to Thailand, why do I train so much if there is no fight? I don’t understand.”
So what are we supposed to make of this situation? Why has the UFC left one of its hottest rising stars on the sideline for nearly a year? Why are they saying it’s on him that he has no fight? What is going on? These are questions we’re going to continue asking until the UFC goes ahead and gets “Borz” a fight. Hopefully before October in Abu Dhabi, but we have our doubts.