LAS VEGAS – Khamzat Chimaev might be done at welterweight, at least according to UFC president Dana White.
Despite picking up an ultra-dominant win over Kevin Holland, most of the talk around Chimaev (12-0 MMA, 6-0 UFC) still remains around what went down on Friday morning at weigh-ins and not at Saturday’s UFC 279.
The UFC star missed weight for what was supposed to be a welterweight main event bout against Nate Diaz. Chimaev missed weight by 7.5 pounds, which forced to cancel the fight against Diaz and triggered a shuffle in the top three matchups on the card, thus ending up with the Holland fight.
White knows that’s a situation that the UFC will have to now monitor closely moving forward.
“Yeah, it’s a problem, it’s a problem that he missed weight,” White told reporters at the UFC 279 post-fight press conference. “We have to look at it and figure it out, but what makes sense is for him to fight at (185). So we’ll see.”
White praised Chimaev for his quick submission win over Holland, and called him “an absolute f*cking freak of nature.” White had yet to speak to Chimaev at the time of the presser, and said they had not had a discussion around the weight miss.
“No, (I haven’t talked to him),” White said. “I mean, what should I talk to him about? You should be sorry? Get smaller? It is what it is. It happened and yeah, we’ll go back this week, come up with a plan, and like I just told Kevin (reporter), have him fight at (185).”
Friday was one of the craziest days in UFC history given the chaos and change that Chimaev’s weight miss triggered. Although it might’ve seen like an insane 12 hours for most people, it’s another day in the office for White.
“Yeah, it was crazy, but if you think about it, 22 years or however f*cking long I’ve been doing it, this is what we do,” White said. “We had that one year when the main event fell off. … We had a year when every main event fell off that year, and we had to do some switching around. It’s a nightmare, but we get it done.”
For more on the card, visit MMA Junkie’s event hub for UFC 279.
