2024-04-30 02:30:35
Bo Nickal promised to declassify Chimaev and fight for the UFC middleweight belt next year
İdman.biz presents an article with a link to livesport.ru.
Bo Nickal, like Chimaev, has not suffered a single defeat in MMA. In the UFC he has 3 early victories in a row
Nikal does not see Chimaev as a threat to himself
Three-time NCAA wrestling champion and UFC middleweight prospect Bo Nickal continued his rise in the promotion on the 300th anniversary card with a second-round submission win over Cody Brundage.
This fight marked the first time Nickal reached the second round in his short MMA career, but nevertheless retained his undefeated status. Bo now has a professional record in mixed martial arts of 6-0. And all 6 victories were early.
Nickal has a lot of fans, but there is one person who is still not impressed with Bo’s achievements, and that is Khamzat Chimaev. The two have been trading barbs for much of the past year, and after Nikala’s fight at UFC 300, “Borz” posted more backlash on social media. Seeing this, Nikal was delighted.
“I love it,” Nickal said in an interview on The MMA Hour.
“He sees how good I am too. It’s good for me, good for him, good for the sport. After all, we are going to have a fight with him.
I would just respond to that by telling him, hey, who were you fighting at 5-0, bro? With some random dude in Europe? I’m fighting in the UFC at UFC 300 – these are different levels.
And I think people just need to get to know me better. The more they get to know me, the more they will realize that I am the guy and there is nothing anyone else can do about it.
I wouldn’t be surprised if when we fight Chimaev, I’ll be the favorite, just like I was against all these people I beat before.”
Nickal, 28, has been pushing Chimaev for a potential fight since he officially joined the UFC in 2023. The award-winning wrestler is considered one of the hottest prospects in MMA, and his results in the UFC to date have backed up that hype.
Nickal won 2 debut fights in the first round against Zachary Borrego and Donovan Birdo in Dana White’s challenger series, and then began his career in the promotion and scored equally quick finishes in fights against Jamie Pickett, Cody Brundage and Val Woodburn, whom he completely knocked out in 38 seconds.
Bo explained the success of Borz in the UFC
Nickal knows that a fight with Chimaev is a matter of the distant future, but he is confident that he can deal with the undefeated Chechen as easily as with the same Brundage when they meet.
“I think I would treat him the same way I did the last guy. I’ll lay him down, make a rag doll out of him, and start throwing him around the cage.
Chimaev is far from the biggest fighter in the middleweight division, and besides, he gets tired. Do you think his first round in our fight will be a little better and more competitive? Probably yes.
But if this fight goes 5 rounds, I don’t think he’ll last all 5 rounds to be honest. And this, in my opinion, is a kind of general assessment. Will it be hard at the beginning? Is he going to attack me? Absolutely.
But I don’t think he can really beat me or do anything that will damage me so much that I won’t be able to do anything in this fight.”
For now, Chimaev is heading exactly where Nickal hopes to be in the future – in the thick of the middleweight title conversation.
After dispatching his first seven UFC opponents, most of them with ease, Chimaev is set to take on former 185-pound champion Robert Whittaker on June 22 in the promotion’s debut event in Saudi Arabia.
Nickal doesn’t really care who wins this match, although he admits that if Chimaev wins, it will turn his inevitable showdown with “Greyhound” into a bigger fight.
So in that sense, he is selfishly making his opponent succeed. And Nickal believes the criticism Chimaev has faced since his hard-fought win over former welterweight champion Kamaru Usman has been exaggerated.
Nickal expects to fight for the UFC belt in 2025
Bo Nickal | HIGHLIGHTS (2023)
“I think any time someone gets praised and hyped up, it probably goes too far. This situation can quickly get out of control.
There’s a negative side and a positive side, and then the reality is probably somewhere in the middle for everyone. But I really believe that with his skills he could be a champion. Khamzat has created such a reputation for himself that the guys are afraid of him.
For example, I guarantee you that Whittaker is terrified of what Chimaev is capable of. Regardless of whether Chimaev fought Usman openly or not, he has already built that reputation and solidified it.
The difference with me is that I have also created my own reputation, I also know what I am capable of, and I know for sure that he has no chance of doing this to me.
The reputation aspect has a lot to do with why he won fights the way he won them and why he competes the way he competes. But I really think he has the skills to become a UFC champion.”
As for his own immediate future, Nikal is already aiming to return to active action at the end of July or beginning of August.
“I want to start getting closer to the ratings here as quickly as possible. It’s funny because once you get ranked, you don’t really have to fight everyone.
There are 15 guys in the rankings, and I don’t have to fight 15 guys to get a shot at the belt, right? I only need to fight two or three. It turns out that if I fight a ranked guy, then it is quite possible that within six months I will already be able to reach the title.
So, I think I want to get maybe one or two more fighters who are outside the top 15 and then maybe start moving through ranked guys early next year. 2025 is the right time to fight for the belt. This is roughly how I imagine my path to the UFC,” Nikal added in conclusion.
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