Bo Nickal didn’t get to save lots of the day when UFC reached out to him about changing Khamzat Chimaev for the upcoming struggle towards former middleweight champion Robert Whittaker.
The last-minute proposal got here after Chimaev dropped off Saturday’s UFC Saudi Arabia card resulting from an sickness that prevented him from competing. In Chimaev’s place, UFC finally received extremely touted contender Ikram Aliskerov to just accept the struggle, and he now faces Whittaker in the primary occasion because the UFC travels to Saudi Arabia for the primary time ever.
When UFC was scrambling to search out the very best choice to headline the cardboard, Nickal claims he received a name, however he didn’t discover out about it till it was too late.
“I did get a name, yeah,” Nickal revealed on his YouTube channel. “Sadly, I received a name whereas I used to be within the mountains of Montana and I didn’t get again to cell service for 3 days. I got here again into cell service to a couple textual content messages saying, ‘Name me again, name me again, name me again!’ And it was too late.”
Nickal stated the provide to struggle Whittaker was so actual that UFC had began discussing a bump in his paycheck to just accept the matchup on quick discover. Sadly, the multi-time NCAA wrestling champion didn’t get to barter his purse as a result of he couldn’t reply earlier than UFC had already discovered an answer in Aliskerov.
“I’m not going to reveal numbers, however they had been up there,” Nickal stated. “However, it was simply too late. I couldn’t even actually think about it as a result of they’d already type of figured every thing out, the best way they had been going to do it, as a result of I used to be gone.
“Truthfully, I don’t need to go to Saudi Arabia and struggle. That’s freaking far as crap.”
So far as the brand new matchup goes, Nickal really believes Aliskerov has what it takes to tug off the upset and beat a middleweight veteran like Whittaker in simply his third UFC struggle.
In his first two octagon appearances, Aliskerov ran roughshod over Phil Hawes and Warlley Alves, scoring knockouts in each fights. Taking up any individual like Whittaker is a big step up in competitors, however Nickal thinks Aliskerov is as much as the problem.
“I believe Ikram will most likely win,” Nickal stated. “It relies on how prepared he’s and stuff. I simply assume style-wise, Ikram will most likely win.”
On the subject of Chimaev’s future, Nickal admitted that the curiosity across the undefeated Chechen has began to fade resulting from Chimaev’s inactivity. For the reason that begin of 2021, Chimaev has with solely logged 4 fights. Chimaev was as soon as heralded as a possible boogeyman in two totally different divisions, however Nickal seems like a number of that luster has been knocked off, and dropping out of one other struggle isn’t serving to Chimaev’s trigger a lot.
“That dude’s shedding his aura a bit,” Nickal stated about Chimaev. “He simply must preserve freaking profitable and never doing this crap. I don’t assume he’s over-training, I believe he’s over-partying. I don’t know what else would it not be?”
