Khamzat Chimaev’s rivalry with Sean Strickland has escalated considerably since they were paired up to headline UFC 328 on May 9, but Chimaev’s coach Alan “Finfou” Nascimento said the middleweight champion isn’t bothered by Strickland’s recent death threats.
Strickland held a media scrum Wednesday to promote the fight and said, “I’m going to pull my gun out and I’m going to shoot him” if he and Chimaev have any type of confrontation during fight week in New Jersey. Nascimento told MMA Fighting later that day that those comments are “Sean Strickland being Sean Strickland.”
“When you’re prepared for something and you know it’s coming, it doesn’t surprise you anymore,” Nascimento said. “Khamzat Chimaev hadn’t even seen it. It was only this morning [Wednesday] that we showed him what Sean Strickland had been saying. He watched it, laughed, and we went straight to training. Khamzat Chimaev is handling everything really well. We’ve been talking about all of this for a long time, ever since the fight was starting to come together.”
The UFC hosts a media day with Chimaev on Thursday, “Finfou” said, and he anticipates his fighter to fire back with “some nonsense.”
“That’s part of the game, right?” Nascimento said. “But this whole thing of ‘I’m going to shoot him’ and all that, I think that’s just nonsense. Nobody is going to take things to that level. It doesn’t make sense.”
“This whole trash talk thing is something that’s accepted now, it’s normal,” he continued, “so everyone is going to use whatever they can to try to destabilize the other person. Even if they talk about things that, from my point of view, in my humble opinion, I wouldn’t do. I don’t think it’s a man’s move when you bring up family, kids, you know? But if that’s what’s available, then everyone’s going to use it.”
Nascimento has coached Chimaev since his first pro MMA fight and has been around in the martial arts world for decades, and said he’s used to getting his fighter’s minds away from any kind of distraction.
“My role is simply to talk to my athlete and make sure he doesn’t let this affect him mentally or psychologically because that area needs to be very well protected,” Nascimento said. “We know the responsibility we have. That’s my job. And Khamzat Chimaev is much more mature now. Certain things we used to have to deal with before don’t happen anymore. The work is being done in a very smooth way, to be honest.”
Distractions come from other angles going into UFC 328, too. Chimaev attempts to defend his middleweight belt for the first time since taking it away from Dricus Du Plessis, but has flirted with the possibility of dropping the title immediately after to chase a second championship at 205 pounds. Nascimento hasn’t ruled out that path and believes it’s something the team will explore down the line, but doesn’t want to look too far ahead.
“From the moment both sides accepted the fight, Khamzat Chimaev and Sean Strickland, the very first meeting we had was about eliminating any kind of thinking outside of this fight,” Nascimento said. “Anything about the future, we’ll deal with when the time comes. We need to stay fully focused because this is not an easy fight. There’s no such thing as an easy title defense. We’re preparing for the worst and ready for the best.
“We haven’t talked at all about changing weight classes or what’s going to happen after this fight because it’s very important that our full focus is on this fight, on this moment. The very next day, then we can start to think or talk about anything else. But this was something I personally asked him to understand, and the whole team as well. The most important thing is that the fighter is completely focused and locked in on that moment, because the most important fight in any athlete’s life is always the next one, and Sean Strickland is the next one. All the focus is on this. After that, we’ll start thinking about other things.”
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