Khamzat Chimaev was completely dominant in his victory over Dricus du Plessis to become middleweight champion at UFC 319 but he also faced criticism for not taking more risks and instead mostly just relying on his wrestling for takedowns and control time to win the fight.<\/p>\n
During the 25 minute fight, Chimaev scored 12 takedowns, racked up over 21 minutes of control time and landed a remarkable 529 strikes. He ultimately won a lopsided decision but Chimaev only threatened a potential finish a couple of times, particularly when he had du Plessis locked up in the crucifix position as he rained down punches and elbows.<\/p>\n
UFC legend Matt Brown, who was front and center for the fights in Chicago, agrees that Chimaev didn\u2019t exactly put on the most thrilling performance but neither did one of the most decorated champions in MMA history who is also widely considered an all-time great.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was boring,\u201d Brown said on the latest episode of The Fighter vs. The Writer. \u201c[Georges St-Pierre] had a lot of boring fights. But we don\u2019t really talk about how boring GSP was do we? We talk about how dominant he was. That\u2019s the game that we\u2019re playing. You can\u2019t take anything away from Khamzat for what he did. It\u2019s cool watching him develop.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we see a lot of these wrestlers come into MMA \u2026 we see wrestlers think they\u2019re strikers. I think Khamzat went through that phase a little bit with [Gilbert] Burns and [Kamaru] Usman and then he was like \u2018wait a minute, I\u2019m the best wrestler here, what am I doing? And got back to it. He got a championship out of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Brown argues that all great champion have endured boring fights but that also speaks to strategy and stylistic matchups.<\/p>\n
In Chimaev\u2019s case, he repeatedly took down du Plessis with little resistance and then effectively bullied him around the cage for the better part of 25 minutes. Rather than risk a potential comeback from the now former champion, Chimaev just rag dolled du Plessis and never gave him any room to breathe.<\/p>\n
It may not have been the most memorable performance but Brown also recognizes that wrestling and takedowns are part of MMA, which is what Chimaev used so effectively.<\/p>\n
\u201cJon [Jones] had boring fights. GSP had boring fights. [Matt] Hughes had boring fights,\u201d Brown said. \u201cThe majority of champions do have boring fights, it\u2019s just part of the game. You can\u2019t expect to just have exciting fights every time and be a longtime champion. It\u2019s not a good strategy for competing, especially when you have the option of taking guys down.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis isn\u2019t GLORY. This isn\u2019t Lumpinee Stadium. You have the option to take a guy down, control him, put him on his back and not allow him to put you at risk.\u201d<\/p>\n
That said, Brown understands the argument that Chimaev played it safe after taking du Plessis down repeatedly but never truly threatening with a finish.<\/p>\n
Chimaev did lock down du Plessis in the crucifix on a few occasions where he likely dished out the most punishment but he didn\u2019t get the finish. He also saw an opening for a few submission attempts but Chimaev clearly valued locking du Plessis down on the ground rather than risking the position.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can\u2019t fault him for that,\u201d Brown said. \u201cIt\u2019s so easy to say when we\u2019re sitting out here. He\u2019s the one feeling things and he\u2019s the one sensing DDP. Look, DDP is a tough son of a b*tch. He\u2019s not a guy you want to be taking a bunch of risks with. I thought Khamzat fought very intelligently. I do feel like, again, watching from the outside, I feel like he could have done more. That\u2019s such armchair quarterbacking. He won basically a 10-8 round probably three or four rounds in a world championship fight. Do you really want to criticize that?<\/p>\n
\u201cBut at the same time, I do get the criticism because we\u2019re saying he\u2019s that guy. He kind of goes out and just does what he has to, to win, which is what you\u2019re supposed to do. I wouldn\u2019t say an argument but I was kind of explaining that to some of the people around [saying] \u2018it\u2019s boring.\u2019 I\u2019m like guys, this is a prize fight and he\u2019s going to win the prize. That\u2019s his object of this fight is to win the prize. Not to make you happy because you want to see blood.\u201d<\/p>\n
As far as the future goes, Brown concedes that it\u2019s going to take something special to dethrone Chimaev now that he has the title.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not an impossible task but Chimaev\u2019s wrestling and control on the ground are going to be awfully hard to counter, which is really no different from what St-Pierre did in many of his biggest title defenses.<\/p>\n
Add to that, Brown believes that Chimaev is still adding new weapons to his arsenal and that evolution might eventually lead to more exciting finishes like he\u2019s had throughout his UFC career.<\/p>\n
\u201cUntil someone solves his wrestling puzzle, I\u2019m not sure how you\u2019re going to beat him,\u201d Brown said. \u201cSomeone\u2019s going to have to give him a hard time taking them down where he is forced to stand. Then it\u2019s going to be a close fight on the feet because I don\u2019t think Khamzat is going to be an easy guy to beat on the feet either. As boring as this fight was \u2014 it was boring, I totally, fully admit that \u00ad \u2014 as boring as it was, watching his progression, his ceiling is absolutely up to the stars.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s very cool to watch him progress. He\u2019s not going to lose that wrestling. I\u2019m sure that\u2019s who he\u2019s always going to be but if at some point he come across a Yoel Romero type and he\u2019s forced to stay on the feet, I think it\u2019s going to be exciting to watch and exciting to see how that plays out.\u201d<\/p>\n
Listen to new episodes of The Fighter vs. The Writer every Tuesday with audio only versions of the podcast available on Apple Podcasts<\/a>, Google Podcasts<\/a>, Spotify<\/a>, and iHeartRadio<\/a><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Khamzat Chimaev was completely dominant in his victory over Dricus du Plessis to become middleweight champion at UFC…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":80037,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,1347,785,45518,1591,85,787,1396],"class_list":{"0":"post-80036","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-mmaf-podcast-network","14":"tag-podcasts","15":"tag-sports","16":"tag-ufc","17":"tag-ufc-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80036","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=80036"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80036\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/80037"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}