Khamzat Chimaev doesn't deserve an immediate rematch with Sean Strickland, and the UFC should stop pretending otherwise. He lost a competitive five-round fight he was winning, then handed it back.
Watch what actually happened at UFC 328 in Newark before you buy the callout. Chimaev took Strickland down fifteen seconds into the fight and controlled him on the ground for the entire first round, even hunting a submission. It looked like the usual smother job, but the second round opened and the whole thing fell apart. Chimaev chose to strike, Strickland stuffed his takedown and piled up control time, and the wrestler who was supposed to drown people pulled guard twice. Three judges split it on the fifth round, and two of them, Sal D'Amato and Eric Colon, had it for Strickland. Official scores: 48-47, 47-48, 48-47. The first loss of Chimaev's career, dropping him to 15-1.
Now look at how Strickland earned the belt he's holding. He beat Anthony Hernandez to get the shot, then beat Chimaev to take the title. Beat a ranked contender, then beat the champion, that's the path. Chimaev has beaten nobody since Strickland out-pointed him. His argument for cutting back in front of everyone is that he wants it badly. Everyone wants it badly. That's why there's a line.
Chimaev's own week after the fight is the reason nobody should take the demand seriously. He walked straight up to Dana White after losing and said he wanted out of middleweight entirely: "I want to move up. I don't want to fight in this weight class anymore." Less than a week later his camp told ESPN he was "obsessed" with a Strickland rematch and would accept nothing else. His brother Artur even picked a date and a city, Abu Dhabi in October, that came and went with no fight. Since then Chimaev has called out Dricus du Plessis, Nassourdine Imavov and Caio Borralho, said he'd take an immediate title fight, and floated sitting out if the UFC doesn't book him. A man who wants one specific rematch doesn't spend his autumn naming four other opponents.
Strickland has given the only correct answer: "No, again, as always, you go get a couple W's and I'll see you again. That's just how it works." He's said Imavov deserves the next shot. He's right on both counts.
Middleweight doesn't have an obvious dance partner waiting for Chimaev, so calling out the champion is at least practical. It's also exactly backwards. If the matchmaking is thin, that's an argument for Chimaev to go clear it out and build a case, not to skip straight to a title fight he already lost.
Where this sits right now is absurd. Strickland is in a pay dispute with the UFC, which has him off the promotion's last big card of the year, with reports of a $400,000 show and $400,000 win offer he wants beaten. Imavov jumped in with a $500,000 offer of his own, and right now a Strickland-Imavov title fight looks like the most likely next move, tentatively January. Chimaev's contribution to all this was to troll his way into Strickland's money fight with an offer: "Strickland I will pay you one (lemon)."
A lemon is about what his claim to this fight is worth. He had the belt and had Strickland on the floor, then gave it all back inside twenty-five minutes. The rematch gets earned in the cage, against somebody else, with a win. Until then, Chimaev is just a loud man who won't accept that he lost.
