Khamzat Chimaev addresses inactivity, targets Leon Edwards, Israel Adesanya, more

Khamzat Chimaev wants it to be known that it’s not his fault that he hasn’t been fighting.

The unbeaten two-division threat took to Twitter on Tuesday to address his inactivity, echoing the confusion of fans who are wondering why there hasn’t been a peep about Chimaev competing in 2023. According to Chimaev, he’s ready to take fights at either welterweight or middleweight, and he claims that the UFC simply hasn’t offered him any.

See Chimaev’s tweets below.

“I have no problems with fights,” Chimaev wrote. “If they gave me a fight, I would have fought a long time ago. I did so many training camps and not one fight. The problem is definitely not with me. Prepared in Dubai then to Thailand, why do I train so much if there is no fight? I don’t understand.”

Chimaev most recently competed this past September at UFC 279. The 29-year-old was originally scheduled to headline the event against Nate Diaz, but a disastrous weight cut that saw him come in 7.5 pounds over the welterweight limit forced a reshuffling of the card. Diaz remained in the main event, where he defeated new opponent Tony Ferguson, while Chimaev went on to make short work of Kevin Holland in a 180-pound catchweight co-main event.

He has fought just three times in the past 19 months following a star-making run in 2020 that saw him finish three opponents in three months. Chimaev’s career was slowed by COVID-19 complications that forced him out of a pair of bookings against Leon Edwards (a third booking was also spoiled by Edwards testing positive for COVID-19).

Chimaev’s tweets also included a list of targets, including Edwards (now the UFC welterweight champion), UFC middleweight champion Israel Adesanya, Kamaru Usman, Belal Muhammad, Colby Covington, and Robert Whittaker.

Chimaev responded directly to a tweet from Edwards, who declared the that anyone at welterweight “is light work.”

“You know who is the king,” Chimaev wrote to Edwards.