If Khamzat Chimaev had the choice, his next opponent would be Alex Pereira for the light heavyweight title.<\/p>\n
The new UFC middleweight champion captured the title with a lopsided decision win over Dricus du Plessis at UFC 319 in August. Pereira just regained the 205-pound belt with an 80-second TKO win over Magomed Ankalaev in the main event of UFC 320 earlier this month in a rematch.<\/p>\n
When asked what he would like next if he had his druthers, Chimaev said it would be Pereira \u2014 doubling down on his social media callout following Pereira\u2019s most recent win.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you ask me, of course I would love to fight for the second belt,\u201d Chimaev said on the Badaev Podcast<\/a> (h\/t Red Corner MMA<\/a>). \u201cIt\u2019s no secret, the guy who\u2019s got the belt at 205 pounds now is a very good matchup for me, except for [if] I should get reckless standing with him.<\/p>\n \u201cThey say he has a lot of power, but I\u2019ve never been edged out in that area,\u201d Chimaev said. \u201cHe used to fight at 185, too, and then moved up to 205. So I would like to fight at light heavyweight.\u201d<\/p>\n With Chimaev holding the title at 185 pounds, the division opens up to some new and fresh matchups as there\u2019s a slew of contenders waiting in line. Nassourine Imavov handed Caio Borralho his first UFC loss with a unanimous decision victory in the main event of September\u2019s UFC Paris event.<\/p>\n Reinier de Ridder was slated to headline this Saturday\u2019s UFC Vancouver card against surging contender Anthony Hernandez, but Hernandez was scratched due to injury. Now, de Ridder faces Brendan Allen in the new main event, and should the former ONE champion get another octagon victory, he\u2019ll make a case to fight Chimaev next.<\/p>\n While \u201cBorz\u201d would love to face Pereira next, if the UFC puts him in a defense of his newly won title next, Chimaev will say yes \u2014 if the price is right, of course.<\/p>\n \u201cBut whether they give me Nassourdine, de Ridder, or Hernandez, I don\u2019t care,\u201d Chimaev explained. \u201cJust pay me some good money. \u2026 I have always been like that. If you consider yourself the best, you shouldn\u2019t care who you have to fight.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If Khamzat Chimaev had the choice, his next opponent would be Alex Pereira for the light heavyweight title.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":215719,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,1347,785,85,787,1396],"class_list":{"0":"post-215718","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mma","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-fighting","11":"tag-latest-news","12":"tag-mma","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-ufc","15":"tag-ufc-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215718","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=215718"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215718\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/215719"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}