Caio Borralho knows first hand how good Khamzat Chimaev is.
Borralho (17-1 MMA, 7-0 UFC), who emerged as a top middleweight contender after defeating Jared Cannonier this past Saturday at UFC on ESPN 62, spent some time training with Chimaev a couple of years ago.
Chimaev (13-0 MMA, 7-0 UFC) meets Robert Whittaker (26-7 MMA, 17-5 UFC) in a potential No. 1 contender bout Oct. 26 in the UFC 308 co-main event in Abu Dhabi. Borralho thinks Chimaev’s grappling will be too much for the former champion.
“We spent some time in Sweden with him, training with him for his training camp against Nate Diaz, the fight that never happened,” Borralho told Submission Radio. “But I was there training with him everyday, was his main sparring partner for this camp. I think it’s a very tough fight for Whittaker because Khamzat is a very great, great wrestler. And there’s one thing about Khamzat that people don’t realize too much, like they don’t know what kind of level to expect from him. They know by seeing, but when you feel it, I think it’s a little bit different. This kind of level of wrestling, of grappling. The best wrestler in the division I think is Khamzat, and we saw how he dominated Kamaru Usman. That is a great, great wrestler that fought like Demian Maia and didn’t get dominated the way that he was by Khamzat.
“So, definitely a lot of courage of Whittaker, but I think if he did that, he has something in his mind to this fight. I think he thinks that Khamzat is going to get tired or something like that. But let’s see how good are the training partners of Whittaker that are going to mimic Khamzat’s style. I think it all depends on that, that Whittaker is used to this level of grappling when it comes about his training camp. So, he won’t feel that much difference when the real fight starts. So, I think this fight goes to Khamzat. I think Khamzat is going to like dominate him in the wrestling, in the ground. But Whittaker was a champion, though, so cannot doubt our champion. So, definitely is a fun fight. I’m willing to see this fight for sure.”
Borralho lauded Chimaev for his work ethic – something he thinks is to his detriment at times.
“I didn’t see any other guy in my life that trains as much as he trains, maybe that’s why sometimes he kills his body and doesn’t make it to the fights,” Borralho said. “But, definitely a guy that (out)-trains everyone in the room. There was one time that we did five-round sparring. After his sparring was done he did like a three or four round pads, and then after that he did like a 30-minute round. And I was like, what the f*ck is this guy doing?
“Like why he needs that sh*t? I think he needs that. He was used to it. That’s the only way that he knows how to train properly, to be confident or something like that. So, definitely a guy that trains a lot. He’s very intense on sparring and all the sessions and all this stuff. He was very hard to spar with, but definitely a moment in my career that I developed a lot. I learned a lot from him, from his team.”
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