This was announced at a press conference in Las Vegas by UFC President Dana White.
“I think Usman wants this fight – it’s not a secret,” said the head of the organization after the UFC Fight Night 223 tournament. “He literally came to our office and asked for a fight with Chimaev. I said I love him – Usman is one of the best guys we’ve ever worked with. Look at his achievements. But I don’t do catchweight fights. We don’t do that.”
“Do you know what Khamzat is? If you tell him shit, he’ll come after you and it doesn’t matter who he fights. So for now I don’t know. Obviously we’ve made a lot of announcements lately, but we don’t have that announcement yet because we don’t have a fight. We are working on a fight for Khamzat Chimaev.”
At the moment, Kamaru Usman and Khamzat Chimaev occupy the first and fourth lines in the UFC welterweight ranking, respectively, however, the Chechen fighter plans to hold his next fight in the middle weight category.