Today ahead of UFC 279 Diaz vs. Chimaev, Khamzat stepped on the scale at weigh-ins and missed weight for ultimately one of the biggest fights of his career against Nate Diaz.
Khamzat weighed in 7.5lbs over the welterweight limit at 178.5lbs and did not seem to be bothered, shrugging his shoulders and smirking as he got off the scale. Khamzat has had struggles in the past making weight using Daniel Cormier’s famous towel trick to be able to make at UFC 267. He is a big welterweight and use to alternate between middleweight and welterweight.
Khamzat was pre-occupied all fight week with altercations between him and other fighters on the roster. This week many media outlets caught Chimaev starting with fighters at the UFC PI and press conference.
He was seen trying to fight middleweight Paulo Costa, watching him as he was training with Strikeforce middle-weight champion Jake Shields, then approaching the two with his crew. Chimaev was held back by his crew and then left.
The UFC 279 press conference that never really transpired consisted of Dana presenting only Kevin Holland and Daniel Rodriguez after about a 40 minute delay. Dana explained that there was a backstage altercation between camps of Chimaev and Diaz and Kevin Holland was in the mix with Khamzat.
Darren Till did in an interview with MacLife saying, Khamzat “teepkicked” Kevin Holland to start off the altercation which cancelled the UFC 279 press conference, then it kicked off between Khamzat and Diaz camps.
Dana also described in an interview post UFC press conference that he could just not calm Holland down.
Chimaev was saying before the fight how he was going to be with his crew and was expecting a gangfight before the fight saturday. He was also seen and interviewed at the airport by MMAJunkie waiting for Nate Diaz.
Khamzat was more occupied with other fighters and overlooking Diaz leading up to this saying “Diaz is easy to hit“, “he is old“, “Im gonna kill him” and calling him things as,”Uncle Diaz” . Khamzat was very prominent with his media presence leading up to this fight and rubbing a lot of fighters the wrong way.
This is a very big miss for the fans if this fight is to be scrapped. This is an even bigger miss for Khamzat and his career. He had a fight against the biggest star to propel him potentially into a title fight and misses by 8.5lbs.
