Khamzat Chimaev hit back at Israel Adesanya for his recent dig at him.
Chimaev recently expressed his intentions of becoming a two-weight champion following his emphatic first-round knockout win over Gerald Meerschaert this past weekend.
“Of course! Why not? I did hard work for that. I’m ready. Both divisions. If I do my hard work, nobody’s a challenge for me, I’m going to stop both guys [Kamaru Usman and Adesanya].”
When Adesanya learned of those comments, he didn’t seem to be too bothered, though he did choose to take a dig at the Dagestan native by calling him “rat lip” — a name Conor McGregor has also used for Chimaev.
“I don’t even know the guy, I haven’t seen his fights yet,” Adesanya said. “I saw the presser and he was just talking sh*t. He was just casting his net.
“Have you seen him fight? Rat lip? Meh … Tim said he fought low level competition. So he thinks I’m an easy fight … that’s interesting. I mean, everyone does this when they’re coming up, casting the net wide. Yeah, keep casting.”
Chimaev came across that comment and decided to take to Twitter to respond to the UFC middleweight champion.
“@stylebender what do you said about me it will cost you your belt if you’re still the champion Good luck,” Chimaev tweeted on Wednesday.
Adesanya defends his middleweight title against Paulo Costa at UFC 253 this weekend. Should he remain the champion and Chimaev continues winning and climbing up the ranks, we could be in store for this matchup in the future.
What do you make of Adesanya and Chimaev’s back-and-forth?