Carlos
Barreto doesn’t see anyone stopping Khamzat
Chimaev at middleweight after the Chechen-born Swede’s dominant
performance against Robert
Whittaker at UFC
308.
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“Whittaker was the worst combination in the division for Chimaev,”
said the UFC Fight Pass Brazil commentator on the Papo de Luta
podcast. “I’ve always said that Whittaker is the most complete
fighter in the division, not only because of his movement, but also
because of his excellent takedown defense and good jiu-jitsu
skills. Because of the dominant way Chimaev beat him, making it
look easy, I have no doubt he will devastate the division.
“His physical imposition goes very well with his wrestling and
jiu-jitsu technique. Anyone in the division who grapples with him
is going to get hurt. But an unquestionable fact is that his
physical imposition game depends on being healthy.”
While many fans are already starting to dream of a fight between
Chimaev and current light heavyweight king Alex
Pereira, Barreto believes the timing is not right for this
pairing.
“Everything indicates that ‘Poatan’ will move up to heavyweight at
the beginning of 2025. To do this, he needs to bulk up. When he
makes this transition, it does not make any sense to come down to
middleweight again,” he said. “On the other hand, Chimaev has to
wait for the fight between [Dricus] Du Plessis and [Sean]
Strickland to fight the winner, perhaps in the middle of 2025. The
only way I see this happening is if Chimaev gets the middleweight
belt and defends it once or twice. In this case, it could make
sense to UFC to make a superfight with ‘Poatan’ at light
heavyweight in 2026. Of course, ‘Poatan’ would have to beat
[Magomed] Ankalaev before that. So there are too many ‘ifs’ to
think about that now.”