Khamzat Chimaev’s win over Gilbert Burns wasn’t exactly picturesque and his coach let him know it.
Coach Andreas Michael was in Chimaev’s corner at UFC 273 on April 9, where Chimaev won a unanimous decision after a bloody three-round brawl with Burns. This was Burns’ first ever appearance on the scorecards. While there were many positives — Chimaev won the fight and Burns took home the Fight of the Night Award — Michael admitted that he got frustrated by Burns during rounds.
” I was very angry and told him to “Listen.” We’ve been working for this for, like, 10 weeks. Stop jeopardizing this because you want to show everyone you’re the man. Understand? You are the man, but keep it simple. Keep your jab going. “Keep it simple. Keep the focus on what you’ve been doing,” Michael stated on The MMA Hour . “And at the end of the day we say, nobody’s going to love — well, I’m not saying nobody — but people love a winner. So just win the f****** fight.
“I don’t remember Jon Jones’ fights in his last part of his career. Although they haven’t been great, nobody can forget that. If you look at Sherdog, it’s win-win win-win win-win. That’s all people will remember at the end of it all, unfortunately. They love a winner and they forget about a loser. He doesn’t have to fight boring opponents. I am encouraging him to fight more intelligent fighters .”
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Chimaev was a force of nature in his first four UFC appearances, dominating John Phillips in his UFC debut before finishing him in the second round and following that performance with three consecutive first-round finishes. Unsurprisingly, Michael knew that Chimaev would attempt to finish Burns quickly as well.
Michael urged Chimaev be more systematic in his approach to Burns. But it wasn’t long before that plan was thrown out of the window.
“The plan was to just box him,” Michael said. “Keep the jab going because that’s the way to handle that situation. We didn’t cover everything he did, but he wanted to let people know that he was here and would walk through any guy if he needed. The No. 2, No. 1, champions, they’re there because they’re f****** tough. They’re some tough dudes, respect to them. So if you understand that and that comes with experience, if you understand that then you have the patience to handle that situation and that will make you maybe finish him in one or two rounds, but you need that patience and that patience comes with experience. Khamzat almost never made it past the first round.
“It’s like [Mike] Tyson the first time he went 12 rounds, it’s like, ‘Oh my God, he got exposed.’ … What did they say about Khabib [Nurmagomedov], for example, when he fought against Tibau? These are great, great fighters, but it’s how you handle adversity that shows that you’re a great fighter. Not every performance is spectacular
Michael felt frustrated on fight night but he understands now that Chimaev’s performance is being scrutinized and that critics are inevitable.
“He is a work-in-progress,” Michael stated. You know what? “A lot people are talking a lot of ***, talk out of their mouths, you know?” It’s impossible to make everybody happy. If he knocked the guy out in two seconds, they would have said, ‘But his conditioning.’ ‘He doesn’t have heart.’ ‘He has to be tested.’ ‘He has to be this.’ So you can’t make everyone happy.
“Of course, I didn’t like the way that he wanted to knock the guy out and show everyone, ‘Look, I’m just gonna walk through this guy as well,’ because we had a game plan. And the game plan was that he should just keep it simple. Although Khamzat has a great talent in striking, he still needs to have a lot more experience. He was short of experience that night, and he gained it that evening. He gained a lot of experience, but it was hard .”
Michael believes that Chimaev is already a lot more accomplished than most people would expect, especially considering his humble beginnings. Michael recalls a green Chimaev entering his gym in 2016 and immediately proclaiming that he wanted to be at the same level of Allstars Training Center star and Swedish MMA pioneer Alexander Gustafsson.
“He arrived and just began brawling with other people,” Michael stated. He just came in and said, “Hey Alex, I wanna be like Alex.” “I want to be just like all of these guys. I’m gonna crush everyone.'”
” I was thinking: ‘Oh my god, another one these nutcases just came in and is hard for like five seconds, and that’s it. As soon as he gets a taste of his own medicine he’s gonna piss off.’ But that was not the case. He didn’t know any striking so I just started brawling. He did not have any experience with grappling. He came in as a novice wrestler, and while I could see a lot in him, his teammates also saw potential. He started to work hard. In four years, he’s ranked No. 2 in the world now because his first MMA professional fight was 2018. It took us four years to get into the No. 2 spot.”
