Khamzat Chimaev is happy to step in if rivals Arman Tsarukyan and Ilia Topuria cross paths at UFC Qatar – but it won\u2019t be to play peacemaker.<\/p>\n
Tsarukyan and Topuria are both in Doha for this UFC fight week, with Tsarukyan fighting Dan Hooker in Saturday\u2019s main event and Topuria cornering his brother Aleksandre, who competes on the preliminary portion of the card. The winner of Saturday\u2019s main event puts themselves in a lead position to challenge Topuria for the UFC lightweight title, and Tsaryukan and Topuria have previously taken shots at each other in interviews to add fuel to their feud.<\/p>\n
Chimaev will corner Tsarukyan against Hooker and he\u2019ll also have his back should Tsarukyan run into Topuria backstage, but only to make sure it\u2019s a fair fight.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf something happens, let them go one on one,\u201d Chimaev told Hustle Vlog (Russian translation via Adam Zubayraev). \u201cWe\u2019ll beat all the extra people and they\u2019ll go one on one. I don\u2019t think\u2014I hope nothing like that will happen. But this is sport and we need this kind of hype, we need big loud fights. So they\u2019re doing the right thing. Both are promoting their fight. Someday it will happen.\u201d<\/p>\n
Assuming Tsarukyan and Topuria manage to avoid one another, Chimaev is solely focused on preparing Tsarukyan for Saturday\u2019s main event. He credits Tsarukyan with helping him to focus, especially in his five-round fight with Dricus du Plessis at UFC 319, where Chimaev put on a dominant performance to win the middleweight title.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was the same scenario with me before my fight,\u201d Chimaev said. \u201cDuring the fight he stopped me where needed, boosted me and so on. He supported me with words. Those who also work like this will understand us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asked for his thoughts on Hooker, Chimaev was brief.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery top fighter is dangerous, but he\u2019s not on our level,\u201d Chimaev said.<\/p>\n
Watch the full Hustle Vlog below.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Khamzat Chimaev is happy to step in if rivals Arman Tsarukyan and Ilia Topuria cross paths at UFC…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":300597,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,1347,44,41,39,42,40,787,1396],"class_list":["post-300596","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-latest-news","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-ufc","tag-ufc-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300596","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=300596"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300596\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/300597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=300596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=300596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=300596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}