Khamzat Chimaev ‘heard something click’ when squeezing Robert Whittaker’s jaw at UFC 308

Khamzat Chimaev didn’t mean to hurt Robert Whittaker, but it just happened that way.

On Saturday night at UFC 308, Chimaev picked up the eighth win of his UFC career, stopping Whittaker with a neck crank in the first round. The submission was so brutal that it shattered the former middleweight champion’s jaw and teeth, something Chimaev was not aware of until after the fight.

“Before I come in here they showed it to me, but I felt something was wrong with his chin when I pushed it,” Chimaev said in his post-fight press scrum. “So I feel bad for that. I didn’t mean to break somebody’s chin, but it’s my work, to make somebody pain and make me happy, my family.

“I wasn’t trying to break his jaw in any way,” Chimaev added later. “It just happened that I went for a choke and I heard something click. I thought I was taking his neck, but I guess I broke the jaw.”

The win is Chimaev’s sixth finish in the UFC and earned him his fifth Performance bonus. It also may have earned “Borz” a title shot. While former champion Sean Strickland appears to be next in line for champion Dricus du Plessis, UFC CEO Dana White suggested after the fight that perhaps the pecking order may have changed. If so, Chimaev is happy to meet du Plessis on his home turf of South Africa for the opportunity.

“If it would be for the belt, it doesn’t matter where this goes,” Chimaev said. “I’m just going to go there and take my gold. So it’s up to Dana. I think they’ve never been to South Africa, so if they go it will be good history, and I would like to enjoy that.”

And while winning the title may be the end goal for many fighters, for Chimaev that is only the beginning.

“I talked about three belts a long time ago so of course I want to go up,” Chimaev said. “But what Dana White and the UFC want, I don’t know. First, I have to in my weight class take the belt, then I’m going to think about it.”