Khamzat Chimaev’s confidence is on another planet. “Borz” has extended his callouts as far as the Diaz brothers to Brock Lesnar, and most recently, Israel Adesanya.
At Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) 271 this past Saturday night, Adesanya defended his 185-pound Middleweight title in a rematch with former titlist Robert Whittaker. The Nigeria native would secure his fourth official title defense by earning the unanimous judges’ call. Immediately taking to Twitter after seeing the performance, Chimaev declared “The Last Stylebender” as “easy money for me, 0 wrestling. 1 round I’m gonna kill him.”
Whether or not the two actually ever end up meeting inside the Octagon remains to be seen.
“He’s not really relevant right now,” Adesanya said on The MMA Hour. “I don’t have to take him seriously until I have to take him seriously. His last fight I was impressed with. I was like, ‘Yo, that guy’s good.’ But there’s levels. So we’ll see how he does with Gilbert [Burns]. And he’s only fought like one Middleweight fight that I’ve seen and I’m just like who’s he fought? He can beat a lot of Middleweights, I’ll tell ya that much. A lot of top-level Middleweights. But I don’t have to take him seriously until I have to take him seriously. And I feel like it’s gonna be the same thing with how [Paulo] Costa got set up.”
Chimaev is off to a flawless 4-0 start in his still-young UFC career. 10-0 overall, the Sweden resident has only absorbed two strikes in his four combined outings, finishing all of his opponents splitting time at Middleweight and Welterweight. Despite the options that Chimaev has, he appears to be primarily sticking with 170-pounds where he’s currently in pursuit of a matchup with Gilbert Burns.
UFC 267 in October acted as Chimaev’s last time out when taking out his first ranked opponent in China’s Li Jingliang. As for Adesanya, it seems he’ll next be defending against a fellow winner from UFC 271, Jared Cannonier, who knocked out Derek Brunson in violent fashion (watch highlights).