Khamzat Chimaev was pulled from the UFC Saudi Arabia card due to an illness. Chimaev was supposed to fight against Robert Whittaker in a middleweight bout. Last week, Dana White announced that Ikram Aliskerov had replaced Khamzat Chimaev in the main event.
Recently, Majdi Shammas (Chimaev’s manager) stated that Borz would not retire from MMA. In an interview with The Jim Rome Show, Dana White said that they don’t know what happened to Chimaev. White also said that Chimaev always gets ill when he is close to fighting.
“The problem is that we really don’t know [what happened]. Every time this guy [Khamzat Chimaev] gets close to a fight – I saw video footage of him violently ill on the ground, and he was hospitalized again. He hadn’t trained for like three or four days, or five days, I can’t remember what the number was. But we could not put him into a fight next weekend.
Lately, it’s been hard to get him into the octagon. Every time he gets close to fighting, he gets really sick. I don’t know what to say. It’s not like he’s over here in this country and we’ve had doctors look at him or anything like that. He’s sort of out of touch, so, it’s tough to deal with.”
Dana White talks Khamzat Chimaev. pic.twitter.com/ilLN5Xmift
— Jed I. Goodman © (@jedigoodman) June 17, 2024