\u201cI\u2019m going to pull my gun out and I\u2019m going to shoot him\u201d<\/a> 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 \u201cSean Strickland being Sean Strickland.\u201d<\/p>\n\u201cWhen you\u2019re prepared for something and you know it\u2019s coming, it doesn\u2019t surprise you anymore,\u201d Nascimento said. \u201cKhamzat Chimaev hadn\u2019t 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\u2019ve been talking about all of this for a long time, ever since the fight was starting to come together.\u201d<\/p>\n
The UFC hosts a media day with Chimaev on Thursday, \u201cFinfou\u201d said, and he anticipates his fighter to fire back with \u201csome nonsense.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s part of the game, right?\u201d Nascimento said. \u201cBut this whole thing of \u2018I\u2019m going to shoot him\u2019 and all that, I think that\u2019s just nonsense. Nobody is going to take things to that level. It doesn\u2019t make sense.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis whole trash talk thing is something that\u2019s accepted now, it\u2019s normal,\u201d he continued, \u201cso 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\u2019t do. I don\u2019t think it\u2019s a man\u2019s move when you bring up family, kids, you know? But if that\u2019s what\u2019s available, then everyone\u2019s going to use it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nascimento has coached Chimaev since his first pro MMA fight and has been around in the martial arts world for decades, and said he\u2019s used to getting his fighter\u2019s minds away from any kind of distraction.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy role is simply to talk to my athlete and make sure he doesn\u2019t let this affect him mentally or psychologically because that area needs to be very well protected,\u201d Nascimento said. \u201cWe know the responsibility we have. That\u2019s my job. And Khamzat Chimaev is much more mature now. Certain things we used to have to deal with before don\u2019t happen anymore. The work is being done in a very smooth way, to be honest.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u2019t ruled out that path and believes it\u2019s something the team will explore down the line, but doesn\u2019t want to look too far ahead.<\/p>\n
\u201cFrom 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,\u201d Nascimento said. \u201cAnything about the future, we\u2019ll deal with when the time comes. We need to stay fully focused because this is not an easy fight. There\u2019s no such thing as an easy title defense. We\u2019re preparing for the worst and ready for the best.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe haven\u2019t talked at all about changing weight classes or what\u2019s going to happen after this fight because it\u2019s 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\u2019s life is always the next one, and Sean Strickland is the next one. All the focus is on this. After that, we\u2019ll start thinking about other things.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Khamzat Chimaev\u2019s rivalry with Sean Strickland has escalated considerably since they were paired up to headline UFC 328…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":640763,"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-640762","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\/640762","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=640762"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640762\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/640763"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=640762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=640762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=640762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}