Former UFC light heavyweight contender Alexander Gustafsson has spoken about his concern over teammate Khamzat Chimaev’s health after “Borz” was forced out of this weekend’s UFC Fight Night event in Riyadh.
If everything had gone to plan, this weekend’s main event at UFC Saudi Arabia would have seen Chimaev take on former UFC middleweight champion Robert Whittaker. But after the Chechen-born Swedish fighter was taken ill during fight camp, he was pulled from the card and replaced with Ikram Aliskerov.
And, speaking to Crypto Sports Betting, Gustafsson shared his thoughts on Chimaev’s illness, and suggested that it is a much bigger issue than just a one-off sickness.
“The guy gets ill,” he said.
“There is something with his body that reacts to hard training, because he is the hardest worker in the room – he’s always been the hardest worker.”
Gustafsson has been a mainstay at the Allstars Training Center in Stockholm, where Chimaev bases himself during the Swedish portion of his training. And “The Mauler” said that his teammate should undergo a battery of tests to identify the cause of his issues, which are depriving the 30-year-old the best years of his MMA career.
“They have to run some tests and see what the background is, whether there is something in his body that’s reacting to the hard training because he trains very hard,” said Gustafsson.
“I hope they find what it is and take care of the problem and he gets better.
“He very easily catches a cold, for example – a runny nose, coughing, symptoms that are not a big deal at all, we all get that.
“But I’ve seen when he increases his training a lot, I know his body reacts differently to the training. I don’t know where it comes from. It’s crazy how he reacts to the training these days.”
Chimaev exploded onto the world stage when he first joined the UFC, but since his prolific first year that saw him compete twice in 10 days, then add third win less than two months later, he has struggled to keep a consistent schedule.
When he has competed, however, he has looked like a world-beater, and after he earned a majority decision over former welterweight champion Kamaru Usman in a middleweight bout at UFC 294, it looked like Chimaev was potentially one win away from a shot at the 185-pound title. But with his illness taking him out of a possible title eliminator with Whittaker this weekend, he finds himself on the outside looking in.
It’s a frustrating situation, and one Gustafsson sympathises with.
“I can’t even imagine how frustrated he is, I know he doesn’t feel good at all,” he said.
“He’s ill, he’s very ill. Not only that, it’s the mental part. You have a big fight ahead of you, it’s the big card in Saudi Arabia and everything is on you, then this s**t happens.”
While Gustafsson isn’t sure of the root cause of his teammate’s illness, one thing he does know is that, once Chimaev is back to fighting fitness, he’s a match for anyone on the planet, at both welterweight and middleweight.
“He’s going through some hard times right no,” he said.
“When Khamzat is Khamzat, he beats all of them – Leon (Edwards), Israel (Adesanya) and Dricus (Du Plessis).
“He trains so hard, it’s inhuman the way he trains. But his illness is not because he overtrains, this is a whole different level of illness.”
