Henry Cejudo offers Khamzat Chimaev some harsh words of advice.
Henry Cejudo has advised Khamzat Chimaev to get his sh-t together if he wants to return to welterweight and win the 170-pound championship.
Khamzat’s UFC 279 headliner with Nate Diaz was scrapped after ‘Borz’ missed weight by a considerable margin, hitting the scales at 178.5 pounds, a full seven and a half pounds over the non-title fight welterweight limit.
The card was reshuffled, and Khamzat was relegated to the co-main event, where he took on Kevin Holland at a catchweight of 180 pounds, submitting ‘Trailblazer’ with a D’Arce choke in the first round.
Question marks loom over Khamzat’s future at welterweight after he was reportedly vomiting and feinting while trying to make weight, with UFC president Dana White hinting that his next fight could be at middleweight.
Cejudo thinks Chimaev (12-0 MMA, 6-0 UFC) can make 170 again but only if he makes serious tweaks to his training and stops overexerting himself in the gym, which ‘Triple C’ thinks could be the culprit to his failed UFC 279 weight cut.
“You won’t come back, if you don’t get your s*** together, you won’t come back and ever make that weight again,” Cejudo, the former UFC flyweight and bantamweight champion, told Helen Yee in a recent interview (h/t Sportskeeda). “Trust me, even if you have big balls, you won’t make it because when you’re off that much, just imagine him at 170. He’s struggling to probably make 178. Like you know, he gave everything he had. His coach said his tongue was white, vomiting all that other stuff, throwing up fluid.”
“I’ve been there before,” Cejudo added. “He’s gonna have to really tweak his training. He’s probably training too much and probably allowing more of his metabolism to eat more and there’s a way of doing it, where you can still make weight, still feel good while you’re not overworking your body.”
Khamzat is currently #3 in the UFC welterweight rankings and undefeated at middleweight with two stoppage victories over John Phillips and Gerald Meerschaert. He has ambitions of becoming the next UFC champ-champ and destroying anybody that stands in his way, making him a serious force to be reckoned with at welterweight and middleweight.