Tito Ortiz to beat Du Plessis<\/a>, Chimaev has had no shortage of backers from current contenders, including Michael \u2018Venom\u2019 Page.<\/p>\nPage is fighting on the undercard of 319 against Jared Cannonier after his impressive dismantling of Shara \u2018Bullet\u2019 Magomedov.<\/p>\n
When asked by MMA Junkie about his thoughts on the bout, he said: \u201cWell, interestingly, when he (Chimaev) fought Whitaker, I call him like a Crash Bandicoot, he goes in there and he\u2019s going crazy immediately. Although it didn\u2019t last too long, it was the first time I saw him a little bit more composed.<\/p>\n
\u201c(Du Plessis) He\u2019s a hard person to do anything with. He seems very awkward. He takes shots well. He\u2019s a bit scrappy, but he just stays in it.\u201d<\/p>\n
On how \u2018The Wolf\u2019 should approach the contest, he explained it was best to emulate the composure from the Whittaker win.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo I actually feel like he should just compose himself and try to win rounds first, and then look to see if he can finish him later,\u201d Page said.<\/p>\n
He predicted a win for Khamzat, but said that if the South African were to win, he would \u2018never\u2019 bet against him in any fight and admit that he could \u2018beat anybody\u2019.<\/p>\n
Michael \u2018Venom\u2019 Page reveals welterweight opponent struggles motivated his move to 185<\/p>\n
His move to middleweight was a surprise, considering he only had one loss in the welterweight division to Ian Garry.<\/p>\n
However, there was a reason why he struggled to get matched up against any of the top fighters in the division.<\/p>\n
Speaking to Ariel Helwani, he revealed what the UFC told him after he called out the whole division.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought that was the best way to make something happen. There were no responses at all from anybody. (The UFC told me) It\u2019s difficult to match you,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t like to play the avoiding game. But people are being tactical about who they\u2019re fighting next.\u201d<\/p>\n
He was even disappointed when the first offer after his Magomedov win was an opponent who \u2018didn\u2019t make sense\u2019 for the stature of the victory.<\/p>\n
A win against Cannonier, though, would place him in the rankings even if he has some unfinished business in the division below.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The UFC middleweight division continues to be the most exciting in the company. August 16th sees the title…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":50903,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,20207,786,4120,785,85,787],"class_list":["post-50902","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-dricus-du-plessis","tag-fighting","tag-khamzat-chimaev","tag-mma","tag-sports","tag-ufc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50902","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=50902"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50902\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50903"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50902"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50902"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50902"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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Photo by Jeff Bottari\/Zuffa LLC<\/p>\n