Khamzat Chimaev beats most welterweights according to Sean Brady, but not him.
If you look at the UFC’s welterweight rankings, there are three undefeated men on the list – Khamzat Chimaev, Sean Brady, and Shavkat Rakhmonov. Obviously everyone knows all about Chimaev by now, but Brady and Rakhmonov have relatively low profiles among fans thus far.
Brady (15-0), who already has five UFC wins and is coming off a very impressive victory over Michael Chiesa, spoke to Morning Kombat about Chimaev, and talked about Chimaev’s close decision over former title challenger Gilbert Burns in particular. Brady thinks he showed a lot in the bout – including that he’s beatable (transcribed by MMA Fighting):
“I’ve seen a lot of people giving Khamzat sh-t because he had a tough fight. I feel like people thought Khamzat was going to go in there and shoot lasers out of his eyes. He’s a human. Yeah, he’s very, very good and he mauled a couple of guys who weren’t that good in skill, but Gilbert, I knew that wasn’t going to happen, go down like that. I knew it was going to be a tough fight, and I knew Gilbert was going to take it to him and he did. Khamzat looked great, to go in there being No. 11, to beat the No. 2 guy, that’s a big f—king jump and he looked great.”
“He’s very well-rounded everywhere. He doesn’t have many holes, but he showed in that fight, which I already knew, he is a human being. He can be hit, he can be hurt, he can be rocked. He can be, essentially, finished. If that fight would have had two more rounds — it was super close. If they said Gilbert Burns [won], I would have been completely fine with that. It was a super close fight.”
Brady sees himself as the future of the division, and thinks that while Chimaev can take out just about anyone else at 170, he’s a different animal. And that they eventually square off in the Octagon.
“Khamzat’s beating most of the guys in the division, 100 percent,” Brady said. “Not me. I think I can beat all these guys, and we’re going to go [up] until we meet each other, and it’s definitely going to happen.”
Both Brady and Chimaev are currently waiting for the next respective fight bookings.