Khamzat Chimaev’s utter dominance at UFC 308 reignited his position as the best wrestler at 185lbs. We say perhaps only because the UFC’s middleweight division is also home to Bo Nickal, a three-time NCAA and U23 wrestling World Champion. Given their stylistic matchup and wrestling pedigree, fans have been excited about a possible Chimaev vs. Nickal fight.
Especially with both having dissed each other’s wrestling abilities. But verbose UFC analyst and former superstar Chael Sonnen thinks if the duo met in the octagon, they would be essentially a stalemate in the wrestling department.
“If you want to know who’s going to get the other one off their feet between Bo and Chimaev, it’s a fairly unlikely thing that either of them is going to do. If you put them in a pure straight-up wrestling match, it’s not as easy of a match as Bo thinks it would be. Now if you could have either one of their resumés you want Bo’s and you want Bo’s by a lot, I believe,” Sonnen said on his YouTube channel.
Sonnen, in fact, reminded fans about the first Kamaru Usman vs. Colby Covington fight at UFC 245 five years ago. That bout didn’t have a single takedown landed, or even really attempted by either man. Despite the duo being excellent wrestlers whose whole game is built around chain wrestling.
This anomaly, according to ‘Uncle Chael,’ was because “they had all but an unspoken agreement ‘I am not going to try to take you down again because you are so good at defending, it takes too much energy.’ And that, Sonnen feels, “is what would happen with Bo and Chimaev. I don’t believe that there is a scenario where one of them controls the wrestling for all three rounds, where I can take him down at will.”
While fans may be talking about a clash between the two wrestling icons, there is not much chance of it happening anytime soon because of where they stand in the 185-pound division.
Can Khamzat Chimaev leapfrog Strickland for a middleweight title shot?
Khamzat Chimaev not only defeated Robert Whittaker at their UFC 308 clash last week but did so brutally that his hype train is back on track in full force. The ethnic Chechen will probably fight for the title in his next fight as their clash was seen as a virtual number-one title contender clash for the 185-pound crown.
The only thing that remains to be seen is whether he does so before or after Sean Strickland. ‘Tarzan’, according to Dana White, is next in line to rematch reigning champ Dricus Du Plessis sometime next year. However, with the absolute beating Chimaev put on Bobby Knuckles, many fans are clamoring that Strickland be passed over.
That would have been bad enough for the former champ. But Dricus Du Plessis twisted the knife even further after he recently said he wanted to “100%” fight Chimaev before Strickland. But the final decision, of course, rests with Dana White and his top brass. Moreover, the UFC hasn’t indicated any such change in the middleweight title picture after initially hinting at Chimaev’s contendership at the UFC 308 post-fight presser.
Bo Nickal on the other hand, is gearing up to face an unranked middleweight veteran in the form of Paul Craig in November and is nowhere near fighting Chimaev at the moment. But if and when the champion wrestler makes his way to the top, he at least has a pre-existing storyline and feud with ‘Borz’. What do you think about Sonnen’s take on a possible Khamzat Chimaev vs. Bo Nickal fight?
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