Not appearing at the press conference after the fight with Kamaru Usman, Khamzat Chimaev briefly talked to journalists, informing them that already in the first round of the confrontation with the Nigerian he got an injury that determined the course of the whole further fight.
“I dominated this guy in the first round,” Borz told the media. “In the first round, in the last minute, I think I broke my hand. After that, it was hard for me to fight and keep him down because I couldn’t use my right hand and we saw what happened. Maybe it’s broken, maybe it’s not, but I feel a lot of pain. I don’t know. I don’t care. The important thing is that my arm is up. Usman is a great fighter and I’m happy I won the fight. There’s a lot in my heart right now, so I apologize, guys.”
Having taken the first round due to the total control of the opponent in the parterre, in the second and third five minutes Chimaev also managed to move the Nigerian, but most of the time the fighters spent in the rack, where Usman had a slight advantage.
In the end, all three judges gave the first round to Chimaev with a score of 10-8, but they did not agree on the scores for the rest of the rounds. So judge David Lethaby gave Usman both rounds, and his colleagues Derek Cleary and Vito Paolillo saw the advantage of the former UFC champion only in one five-minute round, but gave him different rounds, which led to the victory of the Chechen fighter by the majority of judges’ votes with the score 29-27 twice and 28-28.
Meanwhile, UFC head, Dana White, confirmed after UFC 294 that Khamzat Chimaev will get a title fight and will be the next opponent for current UFC middleweight champion, Sean Strickland.
Source: https://fighttime.ru/news/item/32952-khamzat-chimaev-sdelal-zayavlenie-posle-pobedy-nad-kamaru-usmanom.html?rand=19907
