Khamzat Chimaev has been involved in some chaotic moments during his rise, but this one might be the strangest. The backstage shove he delivered at UFC Qatar didn’t feel like intensity, rivalry, or even competitive fire. It just felt weird, even by UFC standards. Considering how unhinged the MMA universe can be on a normal day, that says a lot. This entire week has been packed with chaos, drama, and odd behavior across the roster.
At some point, Dana White might actually have to consider stepping in, because like it or not, the sport already gets slapped with the stereotype of being full of childish savages. Moments like this don’t help.
Let’s be honest: Nobody looked good here.
Khamzat Chimaev Shoves Ian Machado Garry Without Provocation
Ian Machado Garry had just beaten Belal Muhammad, walked backstage with a smile, and offered congratulations to Arman Tsarukyan. It was calm. Friendly. Normal. Then, for no apparent reason, Khamzat Chimaev stepped forward and shoved him.
No trash talk. No tension. No real build-up. Just a quick shove that looked less like a champion asserting dominance and more like a guy annoyed that someone else was getting a sliver of attention.
Garry didn’t even do anything provocative. He just brings this oddly serene, overly-enlightened vibe everywhere he goes—like a Western dude who spent one weekend meditating in silence and decided he unlocked the universe.
It’s the kind of energy that makes certain fighters want to test him just to see if there’s anything underneath the calm. You can almost understand the urge to shove him, but it still doesn’t make Khamzat Chimaev look powerful. It makes him look impatient.
Why Did Khamzat Chimaev Act This Way Toward Ian Machado Garry?
The only logical sentence spoken in that entire moment was Garry saying, “He’s not going to fight me.” Not because a fight was ever on the table, it wasn’t, and never will be, but because everyone knew nothing was happening right there in that hallway. Garry’s a welterweight. Khamzat Chimaev is a middleweight champion. There’s no shared path, no matchmaking logic, no scenario where this becomes a real rivalry. The shove wasn’t about competition. It was about attention.
If you look at recent behavior, the pattern is hard to ignore. Khamzat Chimaev’s Instagram presence has been dialed up to maximum volume lately, full of wild claims, including the now-infamous line about beating Alex Pereira and Glover Teixeira at the same time.
At some point, the vibe stops feeling like champion confidence and starts feeling like influencer energy. The shove fits perfectly into that lane: Sudden, dramatic, viral-friendly, and ultimately empty.
Meanwhile, Garry’s confidence has never been in question. The debate has always been whether he’s earned that confidence—not whether he feels it. The shove didn’t change that conversation. It didn’t elevate him, didn’t humble him, didn’t shift his trajectory. It just dragged him into a moment that will be forgotten as soon as the next bizarre storyline pops up on social media.
No Win Situation For Khamzat Chimaev
Who won this? Nobody. It overshadowed Tsarukyan’s win, turned a professional event into a hallway circus, and fed the idea that the sport is drifting toward spectacle instead of substance. The UFC doesn’t need another example of fighters looking like impulsive teenagers when it’s trying to sell itself as a global, elite sport.
But there is one clear takeaway from all this:
Khamzat Chimaev didn’t look like a dominant champion. Khamzat Chimaev looked like someone throwing a temper tantrum at Starbuck’s because the barista spelled their name wrong on their coffee cup.
In a sport built on real stakes, real violence, and real skill, that might be the strangest fight Khamzat Chimaev has picked yet.
