{"id":83837,"date":"2025-08-20T14:09:07","date_gmt":"2025-08-20T14:09:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/83837\/"},"modified":"2025-08-20T14:09:07","modified_gmt":"2025-08-20T14:09:07","slug":"khamzat-chimaev-hands-belt-to-ramzan-kadyrov-in-first-trip-home-to-chechnya-as-ufc-champion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/83837\/","title":{"rendered":"Khamzat Chimaev hands belt to Ramzan Kadyrov in first trip home to Chechnya as UFC champion"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Khamzat Chimaev brought his newly won UFC title back to Chechnya.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">On Saturday, Chimaev dominated Dricus du Plessis, claiming the middleweight title with a unanimous decision win in the main event of UFC 319. The victory made Chimaev the fifth Russian UFC champion (six if you include tournament winners) and the first to hail from Chechnya, and on Wednesday, \u201cBorz\u201d returned to his home country to much fanfare.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Getting off the plane while carrying his title, Chimaev was greeted by Ramzan Kadyrov, the head of the Chechen Republic who has been heavily criticized by numerous international organizations for a wide array of human rights abuses perpetrated by his government. Kadyrov also faced <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2020\/07\/20\/politics\/us-sanctions-chechen-leader\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">several<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/home.treasury.gov\/news\/press-releases\/jy0954\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">sanctions<\/a> from the United States government over his human rights abuses, and for a time, Chimaev\u2019s known association with him <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sportspolitika.news\/p\/ufc-chimaev-kadyrov-politics-mma\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">made it difficult for \u201cBorz\u201d to travel to the United States<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Those issues have been cleared up as Chimaev had no issue making it to Chicago for UFC 319, and it appears his relationship with Kadyrov remains close as he handed the belt to the dictator to carry as they posed for pictures amid the crowd of adoring fans, with Kadyrov sporting a Chimaev T-shirt.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Watch Chimaev\u2019s triumphant return below.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Khamzat Chimaev brought his newly won UFC title back to Chechnya. On Saturday, Chimaev dominated Dricus du Plessis,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":83838,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[49,48,641,701,638,82,640,702,3194],"class_list":["post-83837","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-fighting","tag-latest-news","tag-mma","tag-sports","tag-ufc","tag-ufc-news","tag-videos"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83837","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=83837"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83837\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/83838"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}