Middleweight champion Khamzat Chimaev is set to fight Sean Strickland at UFC 328
on May 9th, and “Borz” already thinks he knows how the fight is going to go because he reportedly manhandled “Tarzan” when they previously trained.That line of thinking is a mistake, though, according to Strickland’s coach Eric Nicksick.
“This was five years ago, you know?” Nicksick told Submission Radio in a new interview. “These guys have gotten a lot better, both of them, and they both realized their full potential
in becoming champions … So I’d expect a lot of improvements out of both of them. So if you’re taking what you did five years ago, either one of them, into this fight? I think that’s a mistake by anyone that does that.”
The temperature has been steadily rising between Chimaev and Strickland, with Strickland dropping a lot of straight up racist insults Chimaev’s direction. With the way Khamzat and his crew rolls, UFC CEO Dana White joked during his announcement of the UFC 328 main event that he’d be hiring plenty of extra security when the promotion arrives in Newark, New Jersey for fight week.
Nicksick joked that he planned to “lock myself in my [hotel] room and cover my eyes and put a pillow over my head or something. Stay out of trouble, bro.”
As for how he expects the fight week faceoffs and staredowns to go?
“God knows. God knows,” Nicksick said. “I mean, they’re gonna get paid to fight, so you might as well save it for the fight, you know? To be honest with you, I think Khamzat and Sean will be professional in that regard. I’d worry about the entourage. You know what I mean? Like, somebody that’s in the crowd or something like that, they see Sean. That’s how these guys try to make a name for themselves, you know?”
“I just don’t see Khamzat risking losing his paycheck. That doesn’t make any sense.”
But as Nicksick said, there’ll be a lot of outside forces around with nothing to lose and everything to gain by disrupting the event and pulling a John Pork vs. Dillon Danis during fight week.
