Tyron Woodley shared his thoughts on Khamzat Chimaev‘s decision to move up to light heavyweight. Chimaev has been a dominant force but plans to move up after suffering his first loss to Sean Strickland.
‘Borz’ lost the middleweight championship to Strickland in his first title defense at UFC 328. While Chimaev had a strong start to the fight, he looked visibly exhausted in the second round. ‘Tarzan’ gained momentum, and the two went on to have a back-and-forth fight, with the American winning a split decision.
After the fight, UFC CEO Dana White confirmed that Chimaev informed him of his decision to move to 205 pounds. The move is not uncommon, as ‘Borz’ follows Robert Whittaker, Paulo Costa, and Reinier de Ridder, who also recently moved up.
Woodley believes moving up a weight class can serve as a reset.
“There’s somebody that fought at welterweight at one point, moved up to 185 pounds, and now it’s 205 pounds. Look at the trick,” Woodley exclusively told Heavy Sports via NewBettingSites.uk. “If they switch weight classes and win, then they drop back to the same weight, they get a reset button.”
He continued:
“We’ve seen it a lot of times when fighters have some losses, they switch, ‘Oh, this weight’s better’ but then they went back down and we forgot about it,” he said. “[Chimaev’s] a good fighter. He’s so dominant and got so much pressure that I feel like you can heavily rely on that. When people got footwork and angles, that sometimes can pump the brakes on that pressure.”
Tyron Woodley Explains How Sean Strickland Found Success Against Khamzat Chimaev
Tyron Woodley also explained how Sean Strickland found success against Khamzat Chimaev. He highlighted Strickland’s fighting style and compared it to UFC Hall of Famer Michael Bisping.
“I think that sometimes when you wrestle or you fight somebody who is very unorthodox and they’re willing to just keep fighting and getting out of ways and slipping out of ways and just being annoying,” Woodley exclusively told Heavy Sports via NewBettingSites.uk. “Michael Bisping used to fight like that. It was all medium speed, all medium power, but it was 100% of the time.”
He continued:
“[Bisping] could do that against Anderson Silva, he knew how to stay at a certain pace, a medium and sometimes high if you think you got somebody hurt,” he said. “But he can go back down to a lower-medium pace and his cardio could sustain it. Strickland is that fighter.”
Woodley Shares Take on How Chimaev Likely Prepared for Strickland
Woodley also shared his thoughts on how he believes Chimaev prepared for his fight with Strickland. The former welterweight champion believes ‘Borz’ likely spent too much time working on takedowns and not enough on other aspects.
In doing so, Woodley suggested that Chimaev expected to take Strickland down easily. However, he was not prepared for the striking exchanges.
“[Chimaev] had planned on probably taking him down and beating him up, so your training camp probably consisted of shooting shots on people, thinking that [Strickland] was going to be an easy takedown, and doing a lot of ground and pound,” Woodley exclusively told Heavy Sports via NewBettingSites.uk. “I feel like it was a lack of honesty from a coaching standpoint and they didn’t simulate the right things.”
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