Pound 4 Pound<\/a>. Usman suggests that instead of defending his title for the first time, Chimaev continues to call out the current light heavyweight champion because Chimaev may be running into the same problem he ran into at welterweight \u2014 he might struggle on the scales.<\/p>\n\u201cFor Khamzat Chimaev to continue to call him out, I think Khamzat, potentially, has outgrown the weight class again,\u201d Usman said. \u201cI think he\u2019s outgrown the weight class again to now he\u2019s like, \u2018You know what? Let me go capture that. Let me go to a new division where I can make the weight and I can capture that,\u2019 because there\u2019s all types of rumors coming out saying he\u2019s 230 pounds, 225, whatever.<\/p>\n
\u201cKhamzat\u2019s a big guy. Khamzat\u2019s always been a big guy. The fact that Khamzat was making 170 is just as ridiculous as Anthony Johnson when he was making 170.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chimaev captured his first UFC title with a dominant decision win over Dricus du Plessis at UFC 319 this past August. \u201cBorz\u201d has repeatedly said that he wants to compete for the most money possible, so targeting Pereira \u2014 one of the most popular fighters in the UFC \u2014 would make sense.<\/p>\n
Usman doesn\u2019t believe that\u2019s what Chimaev is doing. In fact, he believes there\u2019s multiple moves being made by Chimaev \u2014 who is playing the \u201cRumble\u201d Johnson card of moving to a weight class he feels most comfortable with, and planting his flag \u2014 to not only help himself, but another fighter as well.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think Khamzat Chimaev might potentially be in that same ballpark, which is potentially why he\u2019s asking for \u2018Poatan,\u2019\u201d Usman explained. \u201cIf that\u2019s the case, I understand it. Now it makes sense. If you\u2019ve outgrown the weight class, it makes sense. \u2018Why kill myself to get down there when I just can\u2019t make that weight anymore? And if I go up there and I\u2019m able to get that title, guess what? That opens the door for\u2026 Nassourdine Imavov to get that title, or potentially fight for that title.\u2018<\/p>\n
\u201cIt might be chess pieces being played here. It might be chess playing.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kamaru Usman has his theory as to why Khamzat Chimaev is calling out Alex Pereira. The former welterweight…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":454327,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,1347,785,85,787,1396],"class_list":["post-454326","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-latest-news","tag-mma","tag-sports","tag-ufc","tag-ufc-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454326","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=454326"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454326\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/454327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=454326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=454326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=454326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}