Khamzat Chimaev was supposed to make his highly-anticipated return this weekend at UFC Saudi Arabia against No. 1-ranked division contender, Robert Whittaker, in a fight to determine who will compete for UFC’s Middleweight championship next. However, a violent illness struck him down, forcing UFC to replace him with Ikram Aliskerov.
Chimaev broke his silence just this morning. And now UFC CEO, Dana White, has given his thoughts on the situation.
“The problem is we really don’t know [what’s wrong with him],” White told The Jim Rome Show. “Every time this guy gets close to a fight, I saw video footage of him on the ground violently ill. He was hospitalized again. He hadn’t trained for three or four days or five days. I don’t know exactly what the number was, but we could not put him into a fight next weekend.”
Chimaev has been dealing with issues ever since he contracted COVID-19 in 2020, which has seemingly derailed his career. Indeed, since his magical run in 2020 — when he competed three times in two months — he has only entered the Octagon four times and has had numerous cancelations.
“I saw this kid on Fight Island, he wanted to fight the next weekend,” White said. “I let him fight the next weekend. He looked incredible. He’s been on this tear and lately it’s been hard to get him into the Octagon.
“Every time he gets close to fighting, he gets really sick,” White concluded. “I don’t know [how long he’s going to be out for]. I don’t know what to say. It’s not like he’s over here in this country, and we’ve had doctors here look at him or anything like that. He’s sort of out of touch, so it’s tough to deal with.”
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