Great first round. Burns land a few punches early, but did nothing to prevent Chimaev from knocking him down and drawing blood from ground and pound.
Burns won round 2. Chimaev is not hard to hit and Burns is landing a lot but can't wobble him just yet. Huge punch by Burns at the end of the round. Chimaev's corner is livid. 1-1 This may be the end of the hype train.
2-1 Chimaev. Close fight. Chimaev is not as good as we thought he was. He is easy to hit, and he didn't wrestle too much tonight. I don't think he can beat Covington or Usman given his performance tonight.
2-1 either way? Missed half the third. A bit too early for Chamaev but thats what he asked for. Usman has got to be salivating
I still can't believe that Khamzat didn't wrestle. Can't believe he stood and bang with Burns. Fight IQ -100! Insane stupidity. Nearly cost him. Still...big props to @Rakesh for making a case for Burns and defending it all the time. He was definitely the guy who read the fight perfectly. Chimaev is definitely legit. His chin is insane. But he has to work on his fight iq. And his defense.
What a war we witnessed, I think Chimaev felt something on the ground with Burns and wanted no part of it but thats just a guess, but wow, Burns showed up to fight!
Yeah probably, for many wrestlers those active bjj guards are dangerous and tricky because of the wild GnP you can get caught in a triangle or so relatively quickly.... or he just wanted to prove a point after trainign with Till and found himself in a war he shouldn't have started....
Chimaev is not the next Nurmagomedov. He doesn't have the same ring intelligence or the similar all-around skills. He is a good fighter, but he's not an intelligent fighter. He marches forward using his physical strength and power, instead of using intelligent pressure and level changes. He's got to improve his striking and defense. He gets hit by the same punch over and over and he doesn't adjust. I don't like what I saw tonight. I think he loses to both Covington and Usman.
I agree but i think we haven't seen the real Chimaev tonight. All the hype and talk clearly got the better of him. He wasn't fighting to his strengths. He thought he could just walk through Burns and with that KD in the first round he got probably even more confident in that. I think it was probably the right fight at the right time to make him even better. ANd no...he's obviously no Khabib. Never was. Khabib was a safety first wrestler. Position over everything. Khamzat is a super aggressive guy ont he ground. The comparison was always stupid. And Khabib was also extremely defensive minded on the feet too. He was all about safety first and fighting to his absolute strengths.
Great fight. Need to pump the brakes a bit on the Khamzat hype but to be fair he was making a huge leap up in class and is being moved too fast. Burns is the #2 at the weight for a reason and was being disrespected and overlooked by many including a little bit by myself, but he took Khamzat into deep waters and gave him hell. That being said, Khamzat was impressive given the huge leap up in class he was making, the pace he's been moved at, and it being the first time he was dragged into a real fight in the UFC and taken rounds. He proved he could take a shot and dig deep against a far more experienced and higher ranked opponent. Not the highest IQ though as he allows his emotions to get the better of him. He could've made things a lot easier for himself had he taken Burns down more and wrestled instead of standing and trading and with him.
