Bo
Nickal claims to have been offered a short-notice booking
against Robert
Whittaker at UFC Saudi Arabia, which he couldn’t accept due to
some unfortunate circumstances.
Whittaker was originally scheduled to fight Khamzat
Chimaev in the main event at
UFC on ABC 6 on Saturday. However, Chimaev pulled out of the
fight nine days before the event due to health concerns. Chimaev
will now be replaced on short notice by Ikram
Aliskerov.
While the fight has now been finalized, Nickal revealed that he was
also on the list of potential contenders to replace Chimaev. Nickal
claims to have received a call to step up for UFC Saudi Arabia,
which he couldn’t answer as he didn’t have service. After three
days in the mountains of Montana with no network signal, Nickal
returned to multiple messages requesting callbacks. However, by
then it was too late, as the UFC had already finalized the new main
event for Saudi Arabia. Besides, Nickal wasn’t too keen on
traveling to Saudi Arabia to fight.
“I did get a call. Unfortunately, I got a call when I was in the
mountains of Montana and I didn’t get back to cell service for
three days,” Nickal said on his YouTube channel. “So, I came back
into cell service to a few text messages saying, ‘Call me back,
call me back, call me back,’ and it was too late. And I’m not gonna
like disclose numbers, but they were up there. But it was just too
late. I couldn’t even really consider it because they had already
kind of figured everything out, the way they were gonna do it,
because I was gone… Honestly, I don’t really wanna go to Saudi
Arabia and fight, like that’s freaking far as crap.”
While Nickal was leaning toward Whittaker against Chimaev, he
believes Aliskerov has a stylistic advantage against the former
middleweight champion.
“I was [favoring Whittaker against Chimaev] too given the scenario
and stuff,” Nickal said. “But I don’t know man, depends of how
ready he [Aliskerov] is and stuff. I just think that style-wise
Ikram will probably win.”
Aliskerov’s lone career loss came against Khamzat
Chimaev via first round KO in 2019. Aliskerov has finished nine
of his 15 career wins, which includes a back-to-back first round
stoppages to begin his UFC tenure.
Meanwhile, Nickal is coming off a second-round submission win over
Cody
Brundage at UFC 300 in April, the only time he went beyond the
opening frame in pro career.