Khamzat Chimaev appears to be fighting fit once again.
Chimaev was supposed to face former middleweight champion Robert Whittaker in June but withdrew from the fight at the last minute.
Dana White claimed that the UFC star was ‘violently ill’ and a member of his team later shared a worrying picture of Chimaev lying in a hospital bed.
The 30-year-old has been battling a mystery illness for the past few years.
In January, Chimaev worried fans by sharing several pictures of him looking extremely unwell, some of which were taken during his time in hospital.
Retirement rumours have been rife ever since, but he recently shut them down with a three-word social media statement, which read: “I’ll be back.”
Now he’s gone one step further by sharing footage of him sparring again.
‘Borz’ was matched up against Mikhail Litvin, who has a massive Instagram following of nearly 15 million and a YouTube subscriber count of 12 million.
The Russian influencer challenged himself to survive 60 seconds with Chimaev, and it went as bad as you would imagine.
Litvin was immediately backed to the cage fence and dropped by a barrage of punches.
Chimaev continued to batter his floored opponent, who curled up in a ball and waited to be saved from the merciless beating he was taking.
Eventually, someone called a time-out and gave Litvin the chance to recover.
Bravely (or stupidly) he decided to get up and continue fighting Chimaev, who targeted his body and triggered another intervention for a standing eight-count.
One more big body shot had Litvin rolling around the floor in agony.
The spar was officially over and Chimaev got his first taste of victory since outpointing former welterweight champion Kamaru Usman over three rounds in October 2023.
It’s unclear when he’ll return for a real fight in the UFC Octagon.