Here is a thing that happened: Khamzat Chimaev went into UFC 328 having allegedly cut somewhere between 42 and 50 pounds, fought five brutal rounds against Sean Strickland, lost his middleweight title on a split decision, and then signed to wrestle Dillon Danis at RAF 10 on June 13.

Joe Rogan looked at that timeline and said, publicly: "Here is my fear."

Which is polite of him. Most people skipped the preamble.

Rogan's concern, expressed after UFC 328, is specific: the RAF format — kicks to the legs, punches to the body, jiu-jitsu on top of wrestling — creates real knee injury risk for someone stuffing explosive takedowns. "The guy is trying to avoid the takedown, and he catches his knee in a weird way, and it blows out," Rogan said. He added: "Wrestlers blow their knees out all the time. It's just a part of the craziness of explosive movement."

Rogan has trained for years, has had Chimaev on the podcast, isn't coming at this from hostility. What he's flagging is something practitioners already know: extreme weight cuts wreck connective tissue in ways that don't resolve on the same schedule as bodyweight. Muscles rehydrate in days. Cartilage takes weeks. The fluid that lubricates joints doesn't come back when the scale does.

Chimaev was reported to have cut approximately 46 pounds for UFC 328 — a number Tsarukyan floated before the fight, which the UFC hasn't confirmed but nobody's seriously disputed. Nothing about Chimaev's movement in those five rounds contradicted the premise. He got out-grappled by Strickland in a fight built around grappling. He lost his title. And 34 days later, he's scheduled to wrestle.

The format matters. RAF isn't straight wrestling. Kicks to the legs are legal. Body shots are legal. Jiu-jitsu submissions are in play. The chaotic scrambles that most commonly snap wrestlers' knees — awkward sprawls, mid-shot collisions, angles neither athlete planned — are baked into the ruleset. The danger doesn't arrive in a straight line here.

"Here is my fear" means: he's not saying Chimaev should pull out. He's not calling the booking irresponsible. He's pointing at something the match announcement didn't address — the risk isn't whether Chimaev shows up. It's whether he shows up and leaves whole.

That's a different question than anyone was asking.

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The second layer Rogan didn't touch: Chimaev's opponent is Dillon Danis.

SI.com put Danis's cancellation rate at around 60% across booked combat sports appearances. He backed out of Hype Brazil against Tsarukyan. He asked for a 15-week camp for a booked RAF match — it was killed. His $10 million main event against Craig Jones at CJI 3 is technically still on, which is notable mostly because the grappling community has started treating "technically still on" as its own category, separate from "will actually happen."

Rogan's fear about Chimaev's knees has an unofficial safety valve: the guy across from him might not show up. By June 13, Danis may have found a reason not to be in St. Louis. At which point the injury risk of a hybrid combat wrestling format drops considerably, because the hybrid combat wrestling match is not happening.

That's not a strategy anyone in Chimaev's camp is counting on. But the sport you follow has stranger safety valves.

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The bigger question this opens: what is Chimaev doing?

He's 30. He made a weight cut that would be alarming at 25. He lost his title in a fight where his grappling — the whole premise of who he is — got neutralized by someone who shouldn't have been able to neutralize it. And the response is to go wrestle in a different promotion six weeks later.

The optimistic read: Chimaev is regrouping, making money, working a lower-stakes format while his UFC title picture resets. He's talked publicly about competing for UAE at the Olympics in freestyle wrestling — more than once, more than casually. A grappling crossover isn't a departure from his plan. It basically is the plan.

The pessimistic read: someone just went through a brutal fight on a brutal weight cut, and nobody in his corner is saying no to anything.

Rogan said it because he could say it out loud without it costing him anything. "Here is my fear" is the polite version of: this is a lot to ask of a body that just asked a lot of itself.

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RAF 10 is June 13, 2026, in St. Louis. Arman Tsarukyan fights Tony Ferguson in the co-main. Airs on Fox Nation.

Whether both men show up is still a live question. Whether this is a good idea was a live question from the moment it was booked.

Rogan already said the quiet part out loud. Nobody should pretend they didn't hear it.

This post was generated by AI. Sources are linked below. Follow @bjj-problems on YouTube for the weekly video digest.

Sources

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