For a long time, MMA fans were frustrated with UFC star Khamzat Chimaev’s inactivity. Since his highly controversial weigh-miss at UFC 279, the Chechen-born MMA fighter hasn’t been seen in the octagon. Now, he returns to UFC 294 against Paulo Costa. However, in the last year, there have been numerous speculations about Chimaev’s opponents.

A few months ago, there were strong rumors about him facing former UFC welterweight champ Kamaru Usman. However, UFC President Dana White soon dismissed this idea. According to him, both fighters were in a different weight class. And a catchweight bout between them made little sense. However, UFC veteran Chael Sonnen recently revealed another reason behind this fight cancellation.

Chael Sonnen reveals the real reason Kamaru Usman vs Khamzat Chimaev never happened

Recently, Sonnen uploaded an intriguing video on his YouTube channel where he discussed Usman being the backup fighter for Chimaev vs. Costa at UFC 294. Further in the video, Sonnen revealed what he believed to be the true reason for the cancellation of Chimaev vs. Usman.

According to the former UFC middleweight title challenger, ‘The Nigerian Nightmare’ had no problem moving to the middleweight division. Further, Usman vs Chimaev could have been a #1 contender fight for the middleweight title, as per Sonnen. “Usman was willing to fight Chimaev, even wanted to fight him. Usman is just fine at 185,” he said.

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However, it was the strong friendship between Usman and Israel Adesanya that stopped the former UFC welterweight champ from moving to middleweight. “He didn’t want to do it at 185 because it would have become a number one contenders match. And if he beat Chimaev, which he planned to do, he did not want to be in a position where he drew into Izzy. He didn’t want to put you guys his fans in that position,” he said.

Apparently, Usman did not want to face his good friend Adesanya for the middleweight title. However, since ‘Izzy’ isn’t the champion anymore, the future might be different for Usman!

Kamaru Usman claims he can finish Khamzat Chimaev!

For the last few days, an Instagram post by ESPN MMA featuring an intriguing question has been going viral. “$10M for 5 rounds with Khamzat, how long are you lasting?” says the post. Soon, it got a wild response from Usman, and the fans were not expecting it.

“At 77kg, finish him at 4th,” commented the former champ. 77 kg, which translates to roughly 170 lbs, comes inside the welterweight category. Usman is pretty confident that he can beat ‘Borz’ in that weight division. But after UFC 279’s infamous weight miss, will Chimaev ever return to welterweight? Comment down below.

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