Unbeaten UFC middleweight Khamzat Chimaev has explained the circumstances behind his late removal from the scheduled UFC Saudi Arabia headline fight against Robert Whittaker last month.

Chimaev was pulled from the fight due to experiencing what Dana White would describe to the media as a “violent illness,” with UFC brass later tapping four-time Combat Sambo world champion Ikram Aliskerov — whom Chimaev had defeated in his pre-UFC days — to replace him. Aliskerov was defeated by former 185-pound champion Whittaker in under two minutes of the first round in Riyadh.

Chimaev, though, told Championship Rounds that he had been experiencing health issues in the weeks before the fight and that they became worse as the event approached.

“From the fight of immunity, my immunity had dropped very much, and we wanted to rest a little bit, for a week,” he said, as noted by Bloody Elbow. “I rested and I did not come to my senses. I ended up in the hospital and, to be honest, I had severe headaches.

“They said it was stress, there was something there, they explained it to me. I was in the hospital for two days, then I was home. A week [I was] like this. Three days later, the same thing happened again, I ended up in the hospital again.”

“And the news came out so late too, I’ve been sick before this,” he explained “When the news came out, they said don’t tell anyone. So, when I arrived home, everyone thinks that I’m in the hospital, there was a mouth, headaches, such immunity, I was very weak.”

Chimaev added that physicians said that he required about three weeks of rest and recuperation in order to adequately recover.

According to the online resource Tapology, Chimaev has now withdrawn or otherwise been prevented from competing in six separate bouts during his UFC career.