Khamzat Chimaev is a day away from taking part in the biggest fight of his career. Tomorrow at UFC 294, he will take on former welterweight champion Kamaru Usman at middleweight in the co-main event of the evening. Not only will the bout serve as the co-headliner, it is also a likely middleweight title eliminator.
With high stakes on the line, Chimaev has been hard at work, training. However, that doesn’t mean he hasn’t had any time to engage in media work. ‘Borz’ recently sat down with social media influencer Nina-Marie Daniele, who is well known for conducting a variety of interviews with UFC fighters.
In a fun moment, she had Khamzat Chimaev play the ‘Smash or Pass’ game, which generally involves one player revealing who they are willing to have sexual contact with and who they would dismiss. In this case, however, Chimaev was told that ‘smashing’ meant beating someone in a fight.
So, when Nina-Marie Daniele listed off countless UFC fighters, asking him who he’d ‘Smash’ or ‘Pass’, she couldn’t contain herself as Khamzat Chimaev claimed he’d smash everybody:
“Yeah, everybody, anything, everything, every day.”
She listed a number of fighters, including frequent collaborator and reigning middleweight champion Sean Strickland.
According to Chimaev, the money he stands to make by fighting some of the middleweight division’s best cannot be ignored.
“So much money. Imagine I fight all of these guys. Crazy. Seven fights is almost $20 million.”
His misunderstanding of the ‘Smash or Pass’ game, however, caused Nina-Marie Daniele to break out into laughter several times.
“Yeah, everybody, anything, everything, every day.”
She listed a number of fighters, including frequent collaborator and reigning middleweight champion Sean Strickland.
According to Chimaev, the money he stands to make by fighting some of the middleweight division’s best cannot be ignored.
“So much money. Imagine I fight all of these guys. Crazy. Seven fights is almost $20 million.”
His misunderstanding of the ‘Smash or Pass’ game, however, caused Nina-Marie Daniele to break out into laughter several times.
However, the two were later embroiled in a sudden feud after Chechen dictator Ramzan Kadyrov dismissed Khabib Nurmagomedov’s accomplishments as a fighter by describing him as a UFC project. He stressed that Chimaev was the better fighter, which ‘Borz’ himself repeated, claiming he’d tear Nurmagomedov apart.
However, Nurmagomedov refused to engage either Kadyrov or Chimaev in trash talk and opted to take the high road. Both Chimaev and Nurmagomedov have since reconciled.