The new middleweight contender shared his thoughts on training with Chimaev in the past and how the two could end up fighting whether they want to or not.
Caio Borralho shot up the middleweight rankings last week off a powerful performance against Jared Cannonier that saw the Fighting Nerds standout earn a dominant decision win over the one-time title challenger. He now sits at No. 5, putting him within striking distance of all the stars and contenders at 185 pounds.
While “The Natural” is hoping a fight against former champion Israel Adesanya comes next, he believes it’s inevitable that he’ll end up facing Khamzat Chimaev some day — which is too bad because he considers the former training partner a friend. He opened up on the situation when asked about “Borz” (hopefully) facing Robert Whittaker at UFC 308 in October.
“We spent some time in Sweden with him, training with him for his training camp against Nate Diaz,” Borralho told Submission Radio in a new interview. “The fight that never happened. I was there training with him every day, was his main partner for this camp. I think it’s a very tough fight for Whitaker because Khamzat is a great, great wrestler.”
“People, they don’t know what level to expect from him by seeing. When you feel it, it’s different, this kind of level of wrestling, of grappling.”
“I didn’t see any other guy in my life that trains as much as he trains,” he added. “Maybe that’s why sometimes he kills his body and doesn’t make it to the fights. Definitely a guy that over-trained everyone in the room. There was one time that we did five rounds sparring. And after his sparring was done, he did like three or four [more] rounds. And then after that he did a 30 minute round.”
“I was like, ‘What the f— is this guy doing? Why he needs that s—?’ But I think he needs that. He was used to it. That’s the only way that he knows how to train properly. Properly to be confident, or something like that. So definitely a guy that trains a lot. He’s very intense in sparring and all the sessions. He was very hard to spar with, but definitely a moment in my career that I developed a lot. I learned a lot from him, from his team.”
Borralho noted that Chimaev may now see him as a rival following the Cannonier fight. The Chechen fighter used to text him after every win, but nothing came in after last weekend’s victory.
“After all the other fights that I fought, he always congratulated me,” Borralho said. “I don’t know if he’s still busy or if he knows [I fought]. Maybe the time is coming for us to face each other or something like that, and he didn’t send any message after the [Cannonier] fight.”
“The Natural” made it clear that he wasn’t looking to challenge his former training partner. But when you’re top athletes in the same division, getting matched up is often inevitable.
“If the UFC gave me a chance to choose who I’m facing, I’m not choosing him,” he said. “Just because we are a little bit close and stuff. But I think definitely there will be a time that we must face each other, you know? So I’ll be ready. He’ll be ready. And we’re gonna give a great fight to the fans and great fight to the UFC for sure.”