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Khamzat Chimaev (right) reacts after the fight against Dricus Du Plessis Murphy during UFC 319 at United Center on Aug 16, 2025. \u2014 Reuters\u00a0<\/p>\n
Former Mixed Martial Artist Din Thomas believes Khamzat Chimaev would not be a great UFC champion in terms of defending the title, international media reported on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Chimaev is the current middleweight champion, and he earned the title against South Africa\u2019s Dricus du Plessis at UFC 319 on August 16 at the United Centre.<\/p>\n
There are already a lot of fighters waiting for a title shot against the Russian middleweight champion, especially with Imavov vs Borralho and de Ridder vs Hernandez coming up in the next couple of weeks\/months. <\/p>\n
However, there are still pundits who are questioning Chimaev\u2019s activity in the ring, as he has also missed fights and has not been a regular fighter in the past.<\/p>\n
Despite being the champion, former MMA fighter Thomas still thinks Chimaev would not be an active champion. <\/p>\n
\u201cI thought that was obvious. I thought that everybody felt that way. Apparently people didn\u2019t feel the way I felt about Khamzat and his frequency, and people thought I didn\u2019t want him to win. I predicted him to win. I think he\u2019s the better fighter,\u201d Thomas said.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo when he won, I\u2019m like, \u2018All right, cool,\u2019 and then he said he was going to fight in Abu Dhabi, and I\u2019m like, \u2018Come on!\u2019 <\/p>\n
\u201cSo then I made a comment about that, and I just read something recently about, \u2018UFC analyst said Khamzat Chimaev was lying.\u2019 I might have said that too, but I didn\u2019t mean it that way.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut it is what it is \u2013 I\u2019m just saying he\u2019s a great fighter, but the idea of him being a great champion in terms of defending the belt a lot, I still don\u2019t see it happening.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chimaev is still undefeated since his debut five years ago and extended his record to 15-0 with this victory.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Khamzat Chimaev (right) reacts after the fight against Dricus Du Plessis Murphy during UFC 319 at United Center…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":114767,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[49,48,11924,26723,17724,19451,641,5899,638,82,25542,640],"class_list":["post-114766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-chimaev","tag-din-thomas","tag-dricus-du-plessis","tag-du-plessis","tag-fighting","tag-khamzat-chimaev","tag-mma","tag-sports","tag-thomas","tag-ufc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114766","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=114766"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114766\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/114767"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=114766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=114766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=114766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}