Khamzat
Chimaev’s coach, Alan “Finfou” Nascimento, believes detractors
will always find something to criticize no matter how good a
fighter is.
Chimaev was originally scheduled to fight Paulo Costa
at
UFC 294 in 2023. However, an injured Costa was replaced by
Kamaru
Usman on nine days’ notice. While Chimaev earned a majority
decision victory, Usman was arguably his toughest test to date. As
Chimaev was visibly exhausted in the final round, many believe that
Usman could have won if the fight had been a five-round bout.
However, Nascimento explains that they had specifically prepared
for a three-round fight, which is completely different than
preparing for a five-rounder.
Chimaev finally went five rounds while challenging Dricus Du
Plessis for the middleweight title at UFC 319 last year. “Borz”
ragdolled du Plessis for 25 minutes to earn a dominant, unanimous
decision victory. While critics have stopped questioning Chimaev’s
gas tank for now, he was slammed for a boring performance against
Du Plessis. “Finfou” reveals that Chimaev had asked for his
approval to strike with Du Plessis, which was probably denied.
Nascimento believes that if Chimaev had been knocked out while
exchanging on the feet with Du Plessis, detractors would still slam
him for straying away from his gameplan.
“We had a fight with Kamaru Usman. We were preparing for one type
of fighter, Paulo Costa… A couple of days before the switch, they
switched, the opposite — we didn’t prepare for that… And then
people start to say, ‚If it would five rounds.‘ Bro, this is
delusional,” Nascimento told MMA Today. “We all know this is a
three-round fight — preparation for three rounds… Five rounds,
pure dominance [against Dricus], so now nobody talks about fighting
five rounds anymore. But people say that the fight was boring.
Khamzat asked, ‚Can I strike?‘ and if we said yes, we’d just become
sloppy, unprofessional, and cocky at the wrong moment… If he got
knocked out, everybody would say, ‚What an idiot, why did he
change? He was dominating the guy. The coaches let him do
this.’”