Caio Borrallo believes his former training partner Khamzat Chimaev will beat Robert Whittaker in their next fight.
Chimaev is set to face Whittaker in a heated battle on October 26th at UFC 308 at the Etihad Arena in Abu Dhabi. Borrallo was Chimaev’s main sparring partner in a supposed but ultimately failed fight against Nate Diaz in September 2022. “The Natural” believes that Chimaev’s opponents won’t be able to truly gauge “Bolz’s” wrestling prowess until they face Chimaev in the Octagon. Borrallo points out that Chimaev just won a majority decision over former champion Kamaru Usman, who leaves behind ace grapplers like Demian Maia, Rafael dos Anjos and Gilbert Burns. Borrallo expects Chimaev to beat Whittaker, but isn’t completely dismissing him given “Bobby Knuckles'” championship history.
“I’ve already trained with him and spent time with him in Sweden for a training camp with Nate Diaz, but that fight never happened,” Borrallo told Submission Radio. “I trained with him every day and was his main sparring partner in this camp. I think it’ll be a very tough fight for Whittaker because Khamzat’s wrestling is very good. And there’s one thing people don’t realize about Khamzat – they don’t know what level to expect from him. They can see it, but when the fight actually starts, [they] I feel like it’s a little bit different. At this level of wrestling, at this level of grappling, I think Khamzat is the best wrestler in this division. I saw him dominate Kamaru Usman. He’s a great wrestler who fought Demian Maia, but he got dominated by Khamzat… I think Khamzat will win this fight. I think Khamzat will dominate him in wrestling on the ground. But Whittaker was also a champion. There’s no question that he’s a champion.”
Chimaev has struggled in recent years with both scale issues and lack of exercise. The Chechen-born Swede showed no remorse for failing to make weight by a whopping 7.5 pounds for the aforementioned Diaz bout, and ended up fighting Kevin Holland, who was spirited enough to take the bout on the eve of the fight. Most recently, he pulled out of a bout against Whittaker at UFC Saudi Arabia in June this year, citing a “lung infection” and other ailments. Ikram Aliskerov took his place, but suffered the second loss of his career by first-round knockout to Whittaker.
Borrallo believes much of Chimaev’s woes are down to overtraining, recounting the incredibly long training sessions of the Chechen-born Swede, who trains more than anyone else in his room.
“He practices a lot. I’ve never seen anyone practice as much as he does in my life,” Borrallo said. “So maybe sometimes he gets injured and can’t play, but he’s definitely a [trains more than] Everybody in the room. We sparred for about five rounds, and after we were done, he hit the pads for three or four rounds and then ran for like 30 minutes. I was like, ‘What the hell is this guy doing?'”
