While terms of the deal were not disclosed, Chimaev himself suggested he’d be making around $3 million per fight.
Khamzat Chimaev will be smeshing his way through the UFC for a long time.
According to ESPN, the UFC and Chimaev have come to an agreement on a new long-term contract. The news was related to the sports broadcaster on Tuesday by Khamzat’s manager Majdi Shammas.
Chimaev is set to face last-minute replacement Kamaru Usman in the co-main event of UFC 294. He was originally supposed to face Paulo Costa, but “Borrachinha” was forced out of their fight with a bad staph infection. Now “Borz” vs. “The Nigerian Nightmare” is set, and the winner will get a middleweight title shot against Sean Strickland sometime in 2024.
The ESPN report says Chimaev was down to just two fights left on his previous contract, which is an interesting detail. We haven’t seen the Chechen fighter in the cage since a disastrous weight-cut fail in September 2022. Khamzat stepped on the scales three pounds over the 171 pound limit for welterweight, scrapping a fight against Nate Diaz. The UFC was force to reshuffle the UFC 279 main card, splitting three fights to Frankenstein a solution.
Chimaev would beat his new opponent, Kevin Holland, via submission just 2:13 into the first round.
There’s been a lot of speculation as to why Khamzat hasn’t fought since then. Was the UFC angry with him for screwing up their plan to bury Diaz on his way out? Was he going through some sort of secret USADA suspension / arbitration process? Was there personal drama in his life? Some even speculated that his involvement with Chechen leader and U.S. recognized war criminal Ramzan Kadyrov was keeping him from competing in North America and Europe.
Wait till he finds out what it means pic.twitter.com/CtEw4PrPyZ
— JayC (@king__Jayc) October 19, 2023
Perhaps his absence was much more boring and ho-hum: the two were in contract negotiations, and the UFC wasn’t interested in letting him fight out his current deal. Francis Ngannou’s situation has made it clear that the UFC isn’t against slow-rolling the last fights on your contract if you don’t seem eager to sign a new one.
Whatever the case, Khamzat sure seems happy now. In a new interview with Nina-Marie Daniele, “Borz” declared he’d smash the top seven UFC middleweights before doing the math on those fights, seemingly with his new contract in mind.
“Seven fights, it’s almost $20 million,” Chimaev said. “More than $20 million.”
Is Chimaev bordering on $3 million per fight before you even factor in championship pay-per-view (PPV) points?
Remember that MMAmania.com will deliver LIVE round-by-round, blow-by-blow coverage of the entire UFC 294 fight card right here, starting with the early ESPN+ “Prelims” matches online, which are scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. ET, before the pay-per-view (PPV) main card start time at 10 p.m. ET (also on ESPN+).
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