The UFC's top prospect Khamzat Chimaev could return in the summer despite lingering effects of long COVID

• "Surprise, surprise - I'm coming back to smash everybody," Khamzat Chimaev said on Twitter.
• The announcement comes weeks after a phone call from Chechen warlord Ramzan Kadyrov.
• Struggling with long COVID, Chimaev wanted to retire. But Kadyrov convinced him not to.

UFC's top prospect Khamzat Chimaev could return in the summer despite lingering effects of long COVID.

Chimaev took the mixed martial arts world by storm as he bulldozed through all three of his UFC opponents in 2020, submitting John Phillips and Rhys McKee in July before knocking out Gerald Meerschaert in September.

The 26-year-old fighter, who competes in the welterweight and middleweight divisions, was supposed to fight a 170-pound bout against Leon Edwards but the fight kept getting postponed thanks to coronavirus.

It then got canceled for good when Chimaev struggled to recover from COVID-19.

The UFC flew the fighter from Europe to the USA so he could receive treatment there, after a representative of his, Majdi Shammas, detailed in a Front Kick documentary how unwell Chimaev felt when training for Edwards fights.

"He started coughing, started feeling ill again, and we had to cancel the training. He even went in an ambulance to the hospital."

According to Shammas, Chimaev called him one time when he was suffering from the disease. "He thought he was going to die."

That was February. In March, Chimaev was reportedly coughing up blood and hinted that he might retire forever.

But then he got a phone call from the Chechen warlord leader Ramzan Kadyrov who convinced him to un-retire.

"HE REMAINS AND WILL FIGHT TO THE END!" - a statement from Kadyrov said at the time.

Now, Chimaev appears to be returning to the Octagon in the coming months.

"The wolf has been in the mountain, plotting, coming to you in the summer," the 26-year-old's manager Ali Abdelaziz said on Twitter.

-Ali Abdelaziz (@AliAbdelaziz00) March 23, 2021

Chimaev had his own message on social media, too.

"Surprise, surprise - I'm coming back to smash everybody," he said in a photo that showed him pointing a rifle.

-Khamzat Chimaev (@KChimaev) March 23, 2021

It is currently unclear who Chimaev will return against, or when specifically he will fight.