Dillashaw says Chimaev was on 'verge of death' during disastrous UFC 328 weight cut

T.J. Dillashaw has described Khamzat Chimaev’s weight cut ahead of UFC 328 as a near-fatal ordeal, claiming the middleweight contender was “puking up green bile” and on the “verge of death” in the final hours before his split-decision loss to Sean Strickland, who reclaimed the UFC middleweight title.

Dillashaw, a former two-time UFC bantamweight champion who was embedded with Chimaev’s camp for a significant portion of fight preparation, said the deterioration was shocking given how dominant Chimaev had looked throughout training. “Khamzat looked like an animal for his camp, like he was unbeatable,” Dillashaw told MMA Fighting. “There was no way he was going to get beat, but then you get someone that you’re paying — there’s a lot of frauds in this world — and the way that they made him cut weight was horrible.”

Dillashaw, who now runs Wild Society Nutrition, pointed to mismanaged water depletion as the central failure. He explained that losing too much water too quickly causes the body to stop sweating altogether, leaving a fighter trapped with remaining pounds and no physiological means to shed them. “Your body will shut down,” he said. “You can’t go and lose 10 pounds all at once and not drink enough water to tell your brain and your body, ‘Hey, let’s keep losing weight.’ If you lose too much of it too fast in one sitting, your body will stop sweating. Yeah, you might only have three pounds to go, but guess what? That’s gonna take you seven, eight hours because you’re dying. You’re straight up dying.”

Dillashaw said he had introduced Chimaev to sports scientist Sam Calavitta, whom he described as “the best in the business” for his meticulous approach to recovery, supplementation, blood work, hair samples, and hormone monitoring. However, Dillashaw claims Chimaev’s team ultimately trusted a different person to oversee the final stages of the nutrition and weight-cut plan. “Unfortunately, they had trusted someone else to do some of his nutrition and weight cut towards the end and it just ruined it all,” he said.

Chimaev’s condition was already a talking point at the official weigh-ins, where he visibly struggled on the scale. Strickland has since claimed publicly that Chimaev did not actually make weight and was given leniency by the New Jersey commissioner overseeing the bout — an allegation that has not been confirmed or substantiated.

The loss ended Chimaev’s unbeaten professional record and handed Strickland a second reign as UFC middleweight champion. Dillashaw’s account adds significant detail to what was already one of the most scrutinised weight cuts in recent UFC history.