Khamzat Chimaev insisted he would have ended up in jail by killing Nate Diaz if the pair fought at UFC 279.
Chimaev, 28, was supposed to serve as Diaz's final opponent in the UFC on Saturday night, but the fight was scrapped after Diaz refused to accept a catchweight bout when Chimaev missed weight by 7.5lb. Chimaev went on to submit Kevin Holland inside two minutes in their catchweight fight, whilst Diaz picked up his first win in three years by submitting Tony Ferguson.
Fans labelled the original booking between Chimaev and Diaz as a huge mismatch and accused the UFC of "sacrificing" Diaz in his final fight for the promotion. The two fighters were on opposite ends of the spectrum heading into UFC 279, with Diaz losing his past two fights whilst Chimaev had tallied up five consecutive UFC wins.
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Chimaev said of his cancelled fight with Diaz: "If I fight him, I would kill him. I would be in jail, so maybe I have to be happy. Did you see that fight? How they kick and punch? How they wrestle and grapple? I'm the young guy, I'm a killer. I understand these guys are from USA and the crowd like them, but make this fight in my country. You will never find a guy who likes Diaz there. Nobody is going to say Diaz's name there, if they do, we will kill them."
Doctors stopped Chimaev from cutting weight in the early hours of Saturday morning due to health reasons, but Chimaev insisted he would have kept trying to make the 170lb limit if it wasn't for the medical advice. "I'm not happy with the change, my weight wasn't that big that it wouldn't work but the doctor said I had to [stop] it," he said. "I was mad as well, I was thinking what was going to happen. I wanted to fight Diaz, I didn't care about my money, I said give all my money to that guy and let him just fight with me."
Chimaev didn't rule out another fight at 170lb despite his weight miss and said he will assess his future at the weight class with his coach Andreas Michael. "I cut my weight down to 170lb because my coach wants me to be one of the best guys in the world and take three belts," he added. "When we go back home, we'll see what my coach says and then I'll listen to him. If he says welterweight then we do that, if he says light-heavyweight we will do that."
