Bo Nickal Reveals UFC Offered Short-Notice Fight Against Robert Whittaker

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.