Credit:Getty/UFC
Credit: Getty/UFC
After winning his first four Ultimate Fighting Championship bouts,
Khamzat
Chimaev has risen to No. 11 in the promotion’s latest
welterweight rankings and is just waiting for a call to confirm his
Octagon return.
“If it were up to him, I think he would fight every month. I never
worked with someone so competitive,” Alan Nascimento, Chimaev’s
Brazilian jiu-jitsu coach, told Sherdog.com.
According to Nascimento, Chimaev will sleep in the academy whenever
he has a UFC fight announced.
“He just doesn’t want to lose time, so he moves into a room inside
the academy during the whole camp,” Nascimento said. “And in
training, if he loses one round or gets swept by someone, he always
asks me to [do it again], and that’s the most difficult part of my
job with him. He came from a family where his father and brother
were also wrestlers, so he always dealt with a lot of pressure. My
job is to make him understand that, in the evolving process, in any
martial art or combat sport you may have a bad day to achieve your
very best.”
Nascimento revealed that Chimaev’s trash talk with Colby
Covington was not just in hopes of selling a potential
fight.
“He really doesn’t like Colby,” Nascimento said. “Just because he
keeps talking bullshit in the media and when you meet him
personally backstage, he looks like a shy, 12-year-Old Boy.”
As far as the matchup of styles between Chimaev and Covington,
Nascimento says, “I truly believe Khamzat would kill Colby.”
Nascimento believes Gilbert
Burns is one of the most difficult matchups among Top 5
contenders for Chimaev.
“‘Durinho’ is a complete fighter, good wrestler, amazing jiu-jitsu
and has great knockout power. In theory it would be the worst match
up to Khamzat, besides the champion,” he said.
Nascimento said that if Chimaev earns two or three more wins in the
division, he could be in line for a title shot. If Kamaru
Usman is still a champion at that point in time, the coach
believes the odds would be in his fighter’s favor.
“Let´s say Chimaev wins his next two or three bouts and gets the
title shot,” Nascimento said. “He will be 28 or 29 years old,
reaching his prime, while Usman will be 36, fighting five rounds
for five or six years, defending the belt for the eighth or ninth
time. If he is able to keep the same motivation and his best
physical condition for all that time, it’s gonna be a hard war, but
if not, Khamzat will beat him.”