“Hamzat said he broke his hand, but that’s not confirmed yet,” White said at a press conference in Abu Dhabi. “He’s going to get scans and then it will be clear if that’s the case or not.”
“Obviously, Hamzat fought probably the greatest welterweight of all time tonight, a very tough and crafty veteran. Hamzat is incredibly talented, but we need to keep him more active. Hopefully his hand isn’t broken and we’ll set up a title fight.”
At the same time, the head of the organization avoided a direct answer to the question of how he himself assessed the fight, which ended with the Chechen fighter winning by a majority of judges’ votes with the score 29-27 twice and 28-28.
“I didn’t count. We are talking about the fact that the first round was 10-8. That’s probably the case. From there, I don’t know.”
As a reminder, the middleweight bout between Chimaev and Usman, which was the second most important event of the UFC 294 tournament, had challenger status, and its winner is expected to challenge current division champion Sean Strickland.