{"id":304078,"date":"2025-11-23T19:29:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-23T19:29:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/304078\/"},"modified":"2025-11-23T19:29:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-23T19:29:09","slug":"ufc-champ-khamzat-chimaev-out-of-action-until-after-ramadan-in-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/304078\/","title":{"rendered":"UFC champ Khamzat Chimaev out of action until after Ramadan in 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">UFC middleweight champion Khamzat Chimaev might have to wait until the second quarter of 2026 to make his first title defense.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Ahead of UFC Qatar on Saturday, Chimaev revealed that he\u2019s headed for surgery to fix a minor injury in his foot that is going to delay his next fight. Chimaev traveled to Qatar to corner his friend Arman Tsarukyan when he gave the update about the timeline for his return to action.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">\u201cMy return \u2014 after Ramadan,\u201d Chimaev told <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=nDROK_JVLSk\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Adam Zubayraev <\/a>ahead of UFC Qatar. \u201cRight now, I have a small operation on my foot. I\u2019ll step away from training for a couple of weeks, heal my wound. So we\u2019ll prepare after Ramadan, whoever they give me, I\u2019ll face.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Ramadan runs from Feb. 17 through March 19, which means Chimaev is almost certainly looking at booking at fight sometime in April or even later depending on the UFC schedule.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Many Muslim fighters opt not to compete around Ramadan \u2014 a holy month spent in prayer and fasting from dawn until sunset everyday \u2014which includes UFC lightweight champion Islam Makhachev and numerous others.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Chimaev needing foot surgery obviously exacerbates that situation for him if he\u2019s planning on going under the knife soon and then recovering, which seems to confirm he\u2019s not even going to be available in January or February.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Instead, Chimaev is looking at any time after March 18 for his first title defense.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">While nothing has been announced yet by the UFC, Chimaev is most likely going to face Nassourdine Imavov in his next fight. Imavov has rattled off five straight wins including victories over Israel Adesanya and Caio Borralho to put himself in position to battle for UFC gold.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">The only obstacle standing in his way right now might be Chimaev\u2019s surgery and subsequent time to recover before observing Ramadan in February and March.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"UFC middleweight champion Khamzat Chimaev might have to wait until the second quarter of 2026 to make his&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":304079,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,1347,785,85,787,1396],"class_list":["post-304078","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-latest-news","tag-mma","tag-sports","tag-ufc","tag-ufc-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304078","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=304078"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304078\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/304079"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=304078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=304078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=304078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}