During the UFC 294 Media Day, Khamzat Chimaev claimed that he was levels above middleweight champion Sean Strickland.
“I’ve taken him down. I’ve held him down. I’ve choked him. I’ve punched him. I’ve done all those things, so I don’t see something special about him,” Chimaev said during the UFC 294 Media Day.
“He’s a fighter’s fighter. He’s a good fighter. If you look at him, he’s like an American cowboy like from the movies. That’s the kind of guy he is, but we’ve done our work in the gym together,” continued Chmaev. “If they offer him to me, if I can fight him for the belt, that’s what I’ll do, make the money, get the belt. I have nothing against him. I think that if you compare us on a skill level-wise, I’m levels above him. I’m on a whole different stratosphere than him, so he’s not a threat to me. He’s a good guy. He’s a good fighter, and if I can I’m ready to fight anybody. I’m ready to fight anyone, so if there’s a belt there I’ll fight him no problem, even Strickland.”
Strickland’s coach, Eric Nicksick, denies Chimaev’s claims and recollection of their training sessions.
“I don’t know what they saw in the gym, but that’s not the case by any means. I won’t speak about our training sessions, and what happens inside our gym stays within our gym, but there was no one side or the other that was just getting blown out of the water. That’s not… it’s quite the opposite, if you ask me. But, it was very competitive. And Khamzat trains hard, man. He goes hard, he trains hard, and I think he made everybody in the room better. But by no means did I think that there was like, ‘oh, we’re at a disadvantage,’ by any means at all,” Nicksick told Submission Radio.
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Chimaev was originally scheduled to face Paulo Costa at UFC 294 but Costa was forced out after having surgery weeks before the event due to a staph infection. Former welterweight champion Kamaru Usman stepped in on 12-days notice and fought Chimaev to majority decision. With the win, Chimaev earned a title shot against Strickland.
“Khamzat was in our gym quite a bit, trained with us off and on for almost like three years. Especially during the COVID times, he’d come in and got work in. And, I loved having him in the gym,” said Nicksick. “Like, he was a great teammate, he pushed the room. He made all of us better. I learned a lot from him. Especially like, there’s some fighters that I was able to kind of take some of the things that he was doing and apply it. Especially with a guy like Jeremy Kennedy. A lot of the ideologies and routes we run on the ground, I actually have a series where I call it ‘Khamzat’. You know, there’s some things that we do. So, it’s business. It is what it is. We knew that eventually that’s a possibility (that Strickland and Chimaev would fight).
https://www.mmaweekly.com/news/sean-stricklands-coach-sets-the-record-straight-about-khamzat-chimaev
