Former UFC Middleweight Champion Chris Weidman reveals exact reason why he didn't take the Khamzat Chimaev fight
Chris Weidman was ready to take on Khamzat Chimaev, but a rib injury he is currently recovering from pushed that matchup back. UFC decided to match Chimaev against Leon Edwards instead, for the December 19 Fight Night main event.
Speaking to Submission Radio, the former Middleweight Champion revealed that he accepted to fight Chimaev, and although he has to recover fully from the rib injury at present, he wants to have that fight sometime in January next year.
Chris Weidman on fighting Khamzat Chimaev
Chris Weidman said in the interview that he accepted the fight UFC offered him against Khamzat Chimaev. But he also mentioned that he had a cartilage rib injury to take care of, and would not be ready for a fight till mid-January at least.
"They offered me Chimaev. I said yes. Then I started getting really excited about it, and then I said, ‘Well, so I’ve got a little bit of a rib injury right now – a cartilage rib injury.’ And if you’re anybody who’s had that, it’s just a pain in the ass. You’ve got to be really careful with not re-injuring it or bothering it. So I’ve kind of got to work around that right now. So I told them, ‘I’m down to fight whoever at mid-January, but I really want that Chimaev fight,’ just because of everyone acting as if everyone is scared of him and all that. And to me, I always want to fight the best guys. And so if everybody thinks he’s that good, let’s see it."
Khamzat Chimaev has been on a 9-0 winning streak in his career, and 3-0 in UFC. But Chris Weidman refused to believe that Chimaev is someone who can throw him around inside the cage, no matter how good a fighter he is.
Chris Weidman recollected the losses of his career, claiming that none of his defeats except the one against Dominick Reyes was an easy win for his opponent, and implied that he is not someone who can be easily dominated in the Octagon. But before Weidman could get an opportunity to prove his point, UFC went ahead and matched Chimaev up with Edwards.
"I have a hard time imagining anybody throwing me around. In any of my losses, it wasn’t like a dominant win. It was holy cr*p, out of nowhere, and fights that I was winning, other than my (Dominick) Reyes fight. And so I just have a hard time seeing anybody manhandling me and throwing me around. I just can’t imagine that happening. I would love to see that if that’s what everybody thinks that he could do. So that kind of excited me. But next thing I know, he’s fighting the No. 3 guy at Welterweight."
However, if Chimaev loses the fight to Leon Edwards, Chris Weidman would lose all the interest in fighting him at all. The only reason Weidman has been keen is to see for himself what all the hype behind Chimaev is about. But if Edwards goes on to "expose" him, Weidman said, then there was no point or purpose for Chris Weidman to take the fight anymore.