Khamzat Chimaev reacts to reports of Dricus Du Plessis being injured

Khamzat Chimaev is not happy about middleweight champion Dricus Du Plessis potentially being too injured to fight at UFC 317.

UFC 317 is the UFC’s big International Fight Week event show topper on June 28th, and historically it has been one of the promotion’s biggest events of the year. In 2024 it was supposed to be headlined by Conor McGregor vs. Michael Chandler, but a broken toe forced McGregor out. Now in 2025 we were expecting middleweight champion Dricus Du Plessis to defend his belt against Khamzat Chimaev.

But recent reports have Du Plessis unable to compete due to an undisclosed injury, and now Chimaev is responding.

“This guy biggest bullshit,” Khamzat tweeted with a facepalm emoji.

That led to a number of people in the comments throwing his past history of withdrawals back in his face.

“Nobody pulls out of more fights than you,” one X user wrote. “Shut your mouth.”

“Brother how many times have you pulled out of fights in the last 5 years? Taste of your own medicine,” another pointed out.

Since joining the UFC in July 2020, Chimaev has been pulled from six fights. Three of those were when he was struggling with a bad case of long COVID in 2021 which nearly ended his career. Then in 2022 he missed weight by a mile against Nate Diaz, forcing the UFC to play musical chairs with the whole card to keep it from falling apart. Two more bad bouts of illness scuttled fights with Paulo Costa and Robert Whittaker, leaving him with just one bout per year.

But what a bout when “Borz” did step in the cage against Robert Whittaker in October 2024!

Khamzat shattered Whittaker’s teet with a neck crank in under a round, cementing his position as No. 1 contender. Many wondered if his long-discussed visa issues would keep Chimaev from claiming his title, but between a new U.A.E. passport and the UFC friendly Trump administration back in power, things looked good.

Until now, when they look very bad. We’ll have to wait to find out what Du Plessis’ injury is before we can estimate when that fight will be scheduled. But for now, UFC 317 is stuck without a headline championship fight worthy of its position in the calendar.