Chris Weidman was one of a few to jump at the opportunity to fight Khamzat Chimaev, but it didn’t pan out.
Weidman (15-5 UFC, 11-5 UFC) was willing to take on Chimaev in mid-January, he said, but the UFC opted to match Chimaev with streaking welterweight contender Leon Edwards in the Dec. 19 main event.
Speaking to Submission Radio, former UFC middleweight champion Weidman revealed he accepted an offer to fight Chimaev (9-0 MMA, 3-0 UFC), but a rib injury he’s currently healing prevented it from happening.
“They offered me Chimaev. I said yes,” Weidman said. “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.
“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 crap, 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.”
Chimaev, who’s been alternating between bouts at 170 and 185 pounds, could find himself on the cusp of welterweight title contention if he snaps Edwards’ eight-fight winning streak.
But Weidman said if Chimaev loses to Edwards, the intrigue of derailing him would no longer be there.
“Most likely, if he loses his next fight, the interest would just be completely gone – especially a guy with his record, with his experience level, which is really not much,” Weidman said. “The reason why I was taking that fight was because there was so much hype behind him and so many people thought he was really good. But if he was to lose and be exposed by Leon Edwards, what’s the purpose of me fighting him?”