Don’t expect middleweight champion Khamzat Chimaev to buy into Sean Strickland’s threats of violence ahead of their title fight at UFC 328.
Thanks to the intense rivalry between them, UFC CEO Dana White has already said that the promotion is beefing up security and doing everything possible to ensure that Chimaev and Strickland don’t come to blows before actually meeting in the octagon. But Strickland took things to a whole new level when he said he would be packing heat and carrying a gun with him just in case he gets jumped or suffers through an ugly confrontation with Chimaev and his team before the fight.
For his part, Chimaev isn’t too concerned about any of that happening because he believes Strickland is all bark and no bite.
“Clowns always talk,” Chimaev told reporters in a UFC 328 pre-fight media scrum. “He’ll stop being a clown if he’s quiet. He didn’t shoot any chickens in the world, how’s he going to shoot a human?”
Chimaev doesn’t buy that Strickland is trying to start trouble before the fight but even if he did, the Chechen-born mauler feels like that wouldn’t end well for him.
That’s why Chimaev is chalking all this up to Strickland just running his mouth like usual and that’s all he’ll do leading up to this Saturday’s main event in Newark, N.J.
“I don’t think the guy wants a real war outside the cage,” Chimaev said. “If he wanted [a real war], he would be dead already.
“In New Jersey, this is a Muslim community, it’s my home. I don’t think so that he’s going to come with the guns there. Otherwise, it will be a lot of people injured because he’s there.”
Prior to his threats of gun violence more recently, Strickland has concentrated a lot of his pre-fight trash talk on the past training sessions he spent with Chimaev when they worked together at Xtreme Couture in Las Vegas.
It’s one of the reasons Strickland is so confident he’ll recapture the UFC middleweight title because he’s touted how often he dominated Chimaev in those training sessions. While sparring in the gym isn’t fighting in the octagon, Strickland feels like he’s already spent enough time with Chimaev in the cage that he knows exactly what to expect when they finally clash.
Strickland’s claims that he dominated Chimaev in the past actually got a bigger reaction from the UFC middleweight champion than those threats about coming after him with a gun.
“He never had success with me,” Chimaev said. “It’s not going to be different this time as well. I was fighting at 170 at that time. Imagine I beat him at that weight and I was cutting the weight and that time I beat him.
“Right now, people know how big I am. How hungry I am. It’s good meat. I like white American chicken.”
Strickland had irritated plenty of his past opponents and it’s likely he’ll ratchet up the distasteful rhetoric aimed at Chimaev even more when they finally come face to- face during fight week. The UFC 328 press conference scheduled for Thursday gives Strickland the best chance to say something crazy in an attempt to get under Chimaev’s skin.
While pre-fight trash talk is nothing new, Chimaev promises he’s not going to let anybody’s words affect how he fights and if anything, he actually welcomes Strickland to get even crazier because it just makes his job that much easier.
“I like his talking,” Chimaev said about Strickland. “He’s good for me. I don’t worry about that I need to talk. He’s talking for everyone. I hope he’s going to talk more. It’s funny to listen to this guy.”
Read the full article here
