Khamzat Chimaev recently reflected on his middleweight title win at UFC 319.
In recent weeks, Chimaev has turned his attention to the load class above having called out Alex Pereira after he reclaimed the sunshine heavyweight title.
The undefeated star only recently became a UFC champion for the primary time after being one of the vital highly regarded contenders within the promotion.
His dominant win over Dricus du Plessis led to Chimaev mocking those that predicted that he’d suffer his first loss in the largest fight of his profession.
Despite being so confident heading into the fight, the present champion did recently peel back the curtain barely about his expectations for that clash.
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Khamzat Chimaev gives Dricus du Plessis praise despite expecting him to be stronger
Dricus du Plessis has vowed to return back stronger after suffering the primary lack of his UFC profession in August.
His fight with Khamzat Chimaev was remarkably one-sided, with the challenger using his dominant wrestling to largely render his opponent ineffective.
This has led to speculation regarding whether any of the middleweight contenders will find a way to pose a threat to Chimaev after seeing how superior he seemed at UFC 319.
Despite the way of his win, the middleweight champion was complimentary of ‘DDP’ when reflecting on the fight in a recent podcast interview.
He spoke highly of du Plessis’ ability while also admitting that he expected the South African to be stronger after they locked horns contained in the Octagon.
“To be honest, I assumed he’d be stronger than he was,” Chimaev said on the BADAEV PODCAST. “He’s not a nasty fighter. I didn’t let him work much. My wrestling and grappling techniques are on one other level, that’s why he couldn’t show what he wanted within the fight but he’s a unprecedented fighter too.”
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Khamzat Chimaev is bound to have one eye on this weekend’s UFC fundamental event
It appears that evidently following this weekend, we’ll know who’s going to be Khamzat Chimaev’s first challenger for the middleweight title.
Nassourdine Imavov defeated Caio Borralho at UFC Paris last month to emerge as one candidate, but there may be one other.
Reinier de Ridder was disillusioned after his fight with Anthony Hernandez was cancelled, having been matched against alternative opponent Brendan Allen as an alternative.
With a variety of people believing that ‘RDR’ presents essentially the most interesting challenge for Chimaev, he could still emerge because the frontrunner if he gets his hand raised at UFC Vancouver.