Caio
Borralho believes former training partner Khamzat
Chimaev beats Robert
Whittaker in their upcoming matchup.
Advertisement
Chimaev is scheduled to trade leather against Whittaker at UFC 308
on Oct. 26 at the Etihad Arena in Abu Dhabi. Borralho was Chimaev’s
main sparring partner for a scheduled matchup against Nate Diaz in
September 2022, a fight which never came to fruition. “The Natural”
believes Chimaev’s opponents can’t gauge the true extent of
“Borz’s” wrestling prowess until they are sharing the Octagon with
him. Borralho notes that Chimaev is coming off a majority decision
win over former champ Kamaru
Usman, who has left behind ace grapplers like Demian Maia,
Rafael dos
Anjos and Gilbert
Burns in his wake. While the Brazilian expects Chimaev to beat
Whittaker, he isn’t completely counting “Bobby Knuckles” out given
his championship history.
“I already training with him, spent some time in Sweden with him
for his training camp against Nate Diaz, the
fight that never happened,” Borralho told Submission Radio. “I was there training with him every
day, was his main sparring partner for this camp, and I think it’s
a very tough fight for Whittaker because Khamzat has very great
great wrestling. And there’s one thing about Khamzat that people
don’t realize too much. They don’t know what kind of level to
expect from him. They know by seeing but when [they] feel it, think
it’s a little bit different. This kind of level of wrestling, of
grappling, I think the best wrestler in the division is Khamzat.
And we saw how he dominated Kamaru
Usman, that’s a great, great wrestler that fought Demian Maia
and he got dominated the way he was by Khamzat… I think this fight
goes to Khamzat. I think Khamzat is gonna dominate him in the
wrestling in the ground. But Whittaker was a champion also, we
cannot doubt a champion also.”
Chimaev has dealt with both issues on the scales and inactivity in
recent years. The Chechen-born Swede showed no remorse for missing
weight by a whopping 7.5 pounds for the aforementioned matchup
against Diaz and ended up fighting Kevin
Holland, who was game enough to accept on a day’s notice. Most
recently, Chimaev pulled out of a scheduled matchup against
Whittaker at UFC Saudi Arabia this past June, citing a “lung
infection’”among other sickness. He was replaced by Ikram
Aliskerov, who suffered his second ever career loss against
Whittaker via first-round knockout.
Borralho believes a lot of Chimaev’s ill health might have to do
with him overtraining. Borralho detailed a ridiculously long
session of the Chechen-born Swede, who trains more than anyone else
in the room without fail.
“He trains a lot, like I didn’t see any other guy in my life that
trains as much as he trains,” Borralho said. “Maybe that’s why
sometimes he kills his body and doesn’t make it to the fight, but
definitely a guy that [trains more than] everyone in the room.
There was a time that we did like five rounds sparring and after
sparring was done, he did like three or four rounds of pads and
then after that, he did like a 30-minute run and I was like, ‘What
the f—k is this guy doing?’”