Khamzat Chimaev’s weight miss ahead of UFC 279 prevented him from facing Nate Diaz as planned. Diaz still got to headline the event, taking on Tony Ferguson instead, but Khamzat stuck around to watch the fireworks. At the post-fight press conference, Chimaev promised that if he’d been the one in the Octagon facing Nate Diaz, he’d be heading straight to prison afterward.
“If I fought him, I would kill him. I would be in a jail, so maybe I have to be happy.”
Khamzat on Diaz: “If I Fought Him, I Would Kill Him”
Khamzat was unimpressed with what he saw in the Diaz vs Ferguson fight. In the end, Nate Diaz submitted Ferguson in the fourth round, but Khamzat promised that he would have fared very differently against the UFC veteran.
“Did you see that fight? How they kick, how they punch, how they wrestle, how they grapple, do you see? The guys are old.
I’m a young guy. I’m the killer. I don’t understand what the people are talking about. This guy is from USA, this is his home. Guys like him. OK, make that f****** fight in my country. You will see. You will never find some guy who likes Diaz there. Nobody going to say Diaz’s name there. If they say it, they will kill them, so what now?”
For what it’s worth, Nate Diaz didn’t think much of his scheduled opponent, either. Diaz labelled Khamzat a “lame, scared, boring rookie”, pointing to Khamzat’s failure to make weight as evidence.
“I was in the sauna on my last pound, and I was like what the f***? Whatever, let me finish this up and then we’ll talk about it. I was like whatever, let’s just get to weigh-ins, and tell me whatever is happening after I eat and rehydrate.
But I figured this motherf****** is scared. He got punked, he got scared at the press conference. I knew that was going to happen.”In the end, it worked out pretty well for Nate Diaz, who argued his way to a bigger payday.
“I was like you’ve got to pay me. If you want me to switch people on me on one f****** day, I just cut 15 pounds, you make me change my opponent, you guys got to give me more than you give any of the champions in this whole organization. They’re like ‘stupid, we already give you [that]’ and I want more than that then! I lost count [how much they gave me].”
Is Khamzat right? Would he kill Diaz? Let us know in the comments.
