Sean Strickland is the UFC middleweight champion once again, and there was drama in the rivalry, and on the scales ahead of Strickland’s win over Khamzat Chimaev at UFC 328.
During morning weigh-ins, Chimaev was the last fighter to the scale and was announced as making weight — although the clip was something picked apart by the MMA community as many believed it to be a quick read by the commission in Newark, N.J., not to mention, Chimaev looked pretty rough on the scale.
Following Strickland’s win over Chimaev this past Saturday, Chimaev’s brother claimed that the now-former champ accepted a fight with Jiri Prochazka for the vacant light heavyweight title, and then the UFC pivoted to the Strickland matchup — which led to a 46-pound weight cut.
Strickland’s head coach Eric Nicksick was asked about the weigh-in itself, along with the post-fight discourse. For Nicksick, it wasn’t about any sort of potential weight miss, it was about what could’ve come from it for his fighter.
“Well, let’s start off with this: He’s the 185-pound champ. That’s your division, right? So it’s either vacate of defend, simple as that,” Nicksick told MMA Fighting. “If you’re vacating the belt, and moving up in weight, then by all means. But as far as I’m concerned, you’re the 185-pound champ, you have a duty to defend that belt, and you have a duty to be able to make the weight.
“Now, the whole weight situation. It’s not like, ‘Oh, he didn’t make the weight,‘ and this and that. People forget, I don’t know what Khamzat was getting paid, that’s 20 percent or 30 percent, that’s a big fine, that money goes into Sean’s pocket. That’s all we cared about was like, ‘Yo, we want that fine money. We want that tax, baby.’ Other than that, it is what it is.”
Strickland believed — both before and after his win over Chimaev — that his opponent didn’t make weight for the matchup. But knowing Strickland, even if Chimaev would’ve missed weight, it wouldn’t have changed a thing for him outside of his bank account getting bigger.
“We were going to fight regardless,” Nicksick said. “He could have been five pounds over, Sean was going to take the fight regardless. It doesn’t matter, but that’s a good chunk of change had he been missing weight, and we would have got a little bit more money off that.”
Despite UFC CEO Dana White saying that Chimaev wants to move up to light heavyweight following UFC 328, Chimaev’s energy has veered towards the opposite, calling for a rematch with Strickland on social media multiple times. There’s also Nassourdine Imavov waiting for his opportunity.
Nicksick reacted to a potential Chimaev rematch.
“I don’t give a shit, man,” Nicksick explained. “I don’t care. It’s not up to me. We’re f*cking mercenaries, man. It’s like you call, you tell us who we gotta go out and take out, that’s our job. We got to execute a game plan and go take care of business. It’s simple as that, you know, there’s no emotion behind it.
“At this point as a champion, it doesn’t matter. You have to defend the belt for whoever they call, so I don’t care who it is.”
Strickland suffered a shoulder injury prior to the fight, which Nicksick confirmed happened on the Tuesday of fight week. After going 25 tough minutes, and getting his nose damaged in the fight, Strickland says he’ll be taking a few weeks off to chill out.
If Nicksick had his druthers, Strickland would return some time in the fall, but he’s not really thinking of that right now as he’ll get to spend time with Strickland this week to watch the UFC champ’s teammate Francis Ngannou compete against Philipe Lins.
“No timeline or nothing like that,” Nicksick said. “Him and I discussed that a little bit. Even at the airport, its like, spend some time with your wife, invest back in your family. Anybody that’s been in this sport that has a family, they get it. They’re the ones that suffer the most. They spend the most time keeping the household together, alone, all those types of things.
“So, I invited him out [to Los Angeles for Rousey vs. Carano] Saturday. He’s going to come out to Francis’s fight. He’ll come out with his wife and my wife. So it’ll be good cause he was a California guy and be able to spend some time with him and outside of fight camp, outside of the gym. But if I had my choice, man, I would like to see him maybe wait until September, October. Just take some time off and chill.”
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