Khamzat Chimaev has heard enough about Sean Strickland’s injuries. The man Strickland dethroned in May went into the comments of Strickland’s latest injury post and told the middleweight champion that fighting hurt “happens with all of us,” Bloody Elbow reported.
The post in question showed Strickland getting injections into both knees. It landed in the middle of Strickland’s very public fight with the UFC over his contract and his pay, which made it read less like a medical update and more like a negotiating exhibit.
Chimaev wasn’t buying it. He called the whole thing nonsense, told Strickland to toughen up in language that needed a few asterisks, then turned to the crowd and asked, “this is your champ?” He capped it with three crying-laughing emojis, which is about as close to a formal rebuttal as Borz gets.
The beef runs through UFC 328 at the Prudential Center in Newark. Strickland beat Chimaev there to take the 185-pound title and become a two-time middleweight champion. It was also the first loss of Chimaev’s MMA career. After the fight, Strickland revealed he’d fought with an AC joint separation, an injury he picked up training with Johnny Eblen in the days before the card. So the knee injections go into a medical file that was already thick.
Where things stand
Strickland says he won’t fight until his issues with the promotion get sorted out. He’s also floated a jump to boxing and said he’s “kinda over” his MMA career inside the Octagon, which is a strange thing to hear from a guy holding the belt.
Chimaev, meanwhile, wants the rematch now. He’s been pleading with the UFC for an immediate second fight since Newark. His camp’s explanation for the flat performance was the weight cut, but he isn’t planning on moving up, so he’s betting the next cut goes better. According to Bloody Elbow, he’ll probably have to wait anyway. Nassourdine Imavov is being tipped as the next challenger in line.
That leaves a champion who won’t fight, a former champ who desperately wants to, and Imavov standing in the hallway holding his gear bag.
Quick take
Chimaev is right that every fighter walks into the cage with something taped, iced or numbed. Nobody gets through a 185-pound camp clean. But there’s a problem with the trash talk. If Strickland’s shoulder was separated that night in Newark, then Chimaev lost to a one-armed guy, and that’s a tough point to bring up in your own comment section. Strickland, for his part, keeps posting his injuries while asking for a raise, and the UFC has never once paid a man more because his knees hurt. The fight everybody wants is Strickland vs. Chimaev 2. Right now the only one of the two who’s actually asking to fight is the one who lost.
