An ex-UFC champion claims Khamzat Chimaev ducked him as Luke Rockhold prepares his return to combat at the age of 40 and demands a bout with the Chechnyan, nearly three years on from his last fight.
Rockhold became champion in 2015 when he stopped Chris Weidman at UFC 194 in Las Vegas, before he relinquished the belt the next time out against the United Kingdom’s Michael Bisping in June 2016.
The American then fought four more times until 2022 before switching to competitor MMA series like Strikeforce, before eventually signing to the Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship in in 2023 and now the Global Fight League in 2024.
Now as he prepares to make his debut in his latest series, he reveals that Chimaev, the 30-year-old and currently third-ranked middleweight in the UFC, refused facing him three times and never replied to any offers.
“I like all the matchups, so you never know,” Rockhold told Submission Radio. “I am still fighting. I still feel good.
“But you know, first things first. See, we got Weidman, we got Gegard; we got some fun fights. Obviously, Khamzat.
“Khamzat did turn down the fight with me. I was supposed to come back, my first fight before Paulo Costa, they tried to book that fight and he didn’t really want to play.”
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When does Chimaev fight next?
Now on completely different roads, Chimaev is hunting down the UFC middleweight title in a meteoric rise since his debut in Dana White’s fighting division in 2020.
Should he prove successful, he will need to take it away from Dricus du Plessis, who has held the title since he defeated Sean Strickland before following that up by forcing Israel Adesanya to submit in August 2024.
Chimaev last fought, and beat Robert Whittaker, on October 2024 and now promises to take the belts away from the South African, as he wrote on social media, “2025 I will take this belt InShAllah, and no one can stop it.”