Din Thomas still isn’t sure about Khamzat Chimaev as UFC champion

MMA analyst Din Thomas has doubled down on his thoughts regarding Khamzat Chimaev being an active UFC champion.

As we know, Khamzat Chimaev is the UFC middleweight champion. He earned that title by defeating and dominating Dricus du Plessis at UFC 319 in impressive fashion. Now, though, the focus shifts to the future, with many wondering who ‘Borz’ will face off against next.

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There are plenty of candidates, especially with Imavov vs Borralho and de Ridder vs Hernandez coming up in the next couple of weeks/months. However, there are still concerns out there regarding Chimaev’s activity, and how often he’ll get in there to defend the belt.

After Din Thomas came under scrutiny for suggesting that Chimaev won’t be overly active, the man himself decided to explain his thought process.

Thomas maintains view on Chimaev

“I thought that was obvious. I thought that everybody felt that way,” Thomas told MMA Junkie of Chimaev. “Apparently people didn’t feel the way I felt about Khamzat and his frequency, and people thought I didn’t want him to win. I predicted him to win. I think he’s the better fighter.

“So when he won, I’m like, ‘All right, cool,’ and then he said he was going to fight in Abu Dhabi, and I’m like, ‘Come on!’ So then I made a comment about that, and I just read something recently about, ‘UFC analyst said Khamzat Chimaev was lying.’ I might have said that too, but I didn’t mean it that way.

“But it is what it is – I’m just saying he’s a great fighter, but the idea of him being a great champion in terms of defending the belt a lot, I still don’t see it happening.

“The fact that he said he wanted to fight in Abu Dhabi, and as soon as he said that, like almost right afterwards, they booked ‘Fluffy’ (Hernandez) and Reinier de Ridder, and they knew that they had Caio Borralho and Imavov in the fight (already booked for Paris). So that took him out of October automatically. So yeah, I just didn’t see any real authenticity in him fighting in October. Who knows when he fights again?”

Quotes via MMA Junkie