“He’s a monster, especially in the first round – he’s got great wrestling,” “Big” John said on another edition of his podcast. “There are some people who can stop his wrestling, yes, but when he can dominate a fight, he’s just unstoppable in the first round because he looms over his opponents, puts pressure on them, hits them hard, and yet he gets tired
“I can compare him to Conor McGregor, who tears opponents apart in the standup, but once you get past the first round with him, he becomes a different fighter in the second, and even more so in the third round. Hamzat showed his weakness, and it’s not that he was out of shape – he was in shape. He doesn’t know how to control the flow of the fight, distribute his strength and use the moments to take a breath of air and slow down and then get back in the fight and keep the momentum going”
Earlier, Khamzat Chimaev, ranked ninth in the UFC’s middleweight rankings, said he expects to challenge the division’s new champion, Dricus Du Plessis, on April 13 at UFC 300 in Las Vegas or step up for a double pay-per-view to fight one of the division’s top fighters.