A new video shows just how real and serious the struggle has been for UFC welterweight Khamzat Chimaev to recover from COVID-19, leaving his manager, Majdi Shammas, flabbergasted.
“Crazy. What can you say?” Shammas said. “I have no words.”
The video, released Friday on Frontkick.online’s YouTube channel, follows Chimaev’s training this week until the day he withdrew from his UFC Fight Night headliner vs. Leon Edwards on March 13. This marked the second time that Chimaev has pulled out of a booking with Edwards because of lingering complications from the coronavirus, which he first contracted in early December.
In the video, Shammas details how Chimaev has been “in and out of the hospital so many times” in recent weeks as he’s experienced chest pains, high fever, headaches, and muscle pain. Chimaev’s withdrawal from the Edwards fight coincided with an abruptly stopped training session that led to Chimaev being hospitalized.
“He was really bad. He didn’t even do two rounds straight. He did one round and then rested,” Shammas said. “He started coughing, started feeling ill again, and we had to cancel the training. He even went in an ambulance to the hospital.”
Shammas said Chimaev felt so bad, “when he called me, he thought he was going to die.”
After that, Shammas made the decision to notify the UFC that Chimaev would not be able to compete March 13. Looking ahead, Shammas wants Chimaev not to worry about training and focus solely on getting healthy.
“He has to rest a little bit, get his body fully functional. Then he can start training again,” Shammas said. “… Some stuff is not up to him. Sometimes you have to step in and firmly say how it is. I can’t let him train. Who knows? This time, he started training, he got lucky (it wasn’t worse). Next time he might not be this lucky. I’m not gonna take that risk. It doesn’t matter.”
Chimaev (9-0 MMA, 3-0 UFC) broke out in a big way last year to earn MMA Junkie’s “Newcomer of the Year” award. The 26-year-old made his UFC debut on July 16 and beat John Phillips by second-round submission. He then won his second fight 10 days later (a UFC non-tournament record) when he TKO’d Rhys McKee in the first round. Chimaev topped off his 2020 with a 17-second knockout of Gerald Meerschaert on Sept. 19.
Chimaev and Edwards originally were supposed to close out the year as the final UFC headliner of 2020 on Dec. 19, but the fight was canceled after Edwards tested positive for COVID-19.
