Dana White has admitted that rising star’s Khamzat Chimaev’s future as a professional fighter is still unclear at the moment as he continues to battle the symptoms of ‘Long Covid’, but the UFC president’s also made it clear that Chimaev is being his own worst enemy.
“The problem is, the reason that everybody loves him is because the guy is an absolute savage. He wants to fight every weekend. He believes he’ll win the world title right now,” White told BT Sport. “But the problem with a guy like that is you can’t calm him down. He should be resting right now. He shouldn’t be training at all. He should be resting and recovering, but he won’t do it.
“At the end of the day, he’s a grown man, and we can’t control what he does on a daily basis. I don’t know how this is going to play out. We’ll see.”
Despite his toughness, Chimaev has had some very low moments during his more than three month battle against Covid-19, including recently claiming that he was going to retire after coughing up blood following a failed attempt to train.
However, as recently as yesterday, Chimaev was again pictured training despite having been warned not too, and White admits he can’t force him to stop, even though it could be making things worse rather than better.
“If that’s what the guy wants to do, that’s up to him,” White said. “But what he really needs to do is go home, watch a movie, take a nap, relax, and recover. (But) it’s not the killer mentality. He’s a killer. It’s hard to control a guy like that.”
He continued, “This guy’s a physical specimen. This guy is unbelievable. He’s probably never been sick like this before. The difference between him and all the other fighters (who’ve had COVID-19) is the other fighters did what they were supposed to do. They weren’t running full speed on the treadmill and taking grappling classes with guys who were healthy. You can’t do that.”
