During his unbeaten rampage through the UFC so far, Khamzat Chimaev has made it clear that he’ll fight anyone, anytime, but it’s now emerged that there’s actually someone he doesn’t want to beat up in the Octagon – former middleweight champion Robert Whittaker.
In fact, after his first round submission win over Kevin Holland on Saturday night, Chimaev told the media backstage that he thinks Whittaker is a ‘good guy’ and wants to train with him.
“I like that guy, so I don’t want to fight good guys,” Chimaev said at the UFC 279 post-fight press conference. “I need some bad guys, so I want to fight some bad guy, you know? And don’t feel sorry for that.
“I want to train with that guy. He’s really good, like one of the best guys in the world. I was watching his fight. … I’m a big fan, so I watch all things. I watch how he trains, and all these things. A lot of guys want to fight me, so Robert never said something bad about me.
There’s a lot of guys talking sh*t about me. I’m gonna go take their heads off, you know? So, we’ll see”.
Whittaker has since been asked to respond to Chimaev’s comments and has indicated that he’d be more than willing to train with him.
“I heard what Khamzat said about wanting to fight bad guys and I can get behind that,” Whittaker said on Din Thomas and RJ Clifford’s Sirius XM show.
“If he wants to train together, I want to train together and we can go hunt bad guys together. “I think it will be a lot of fun, and we can run amok on a lot of people.
“It’s hard, but I think stylistically he handles a lot of the guys in the division,” Whittaker said. “I would actually love to see Chimaev fight Pereira. I think that’s a great fight for him, and I think it will open the eyes to see what Pereira can do.
“I’d like to see Chimaev fight Israel [Adesanya], just because, stylistically, there are so many different variables in play that it makes it interesting for me.
“Plus, I’ll be able to set my new friend Chimaev on two guys that I want to beat up”.
