"He was walking around the gym with a gun" - Khamzat Chimaev recalls origins of Sean Strickland beef, gets honest about past training sessions

Khamzat Chimaev recently gave his thoughts on Sean Strickland's past comments on their training sessions. The reigning middleweight kingpin refuted Strickland's claims and shared his side of the story.

Earlier this year, in an interview with Red Corner MMA, Strickland took aim at Chimaev, who trained with the American prior to his catchweight bout against Kevin Holland at UFC 279 in 2022 at the Xtreme Couture gym. Strickland accused the 31-year-old of picking weaker opponents during sparring.

That didn't sit well with Chimaev, who fired back at Strickland in a recent appearance on the Badaev Podcast:

''I don’t know. When we used to train together, he was normal. Well, one time I got angry with him and the next day he was walking around the gym with a gun, he thought I’d attack him. We had a group chat for our gym, there was one guy from Chechnya in it and (Strickland) wrote something like, ‘I thought all Chechen’s are strong?’ And I wrote him back, ‘You’re an American chicken, I’ll beat you up. He later said that I misunderstood him, that’s all that really happened. I spoke English badly at that time and I couldn’t tell you exactly what happened, he said something about Chechnya or something, so I immediately attacked him just in case.'' [H/t: Bloody Elbow]

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Chimaev challenged then-champion Dricus du Plessis for the 185-pound gold in the main event of UFC 319 in August. He displayed his wrestling prowess by repeatedly taking down du Plessis and became the new champion via unanimous decision.

Meanwhile, Strickland, who failed to reclaim his belt against du Plessis at UFC 312, was suspended for six months by the NSAC for attacking a fighter on June 29.

Khamzat Chimaev aims to become a two-division champion

In the aforementioned podcast, Khamzat Chimaev expressed his desire to move up and challenge Alex Pereira for his light heavyweight belt:

''If you ask me, of course I would love to fight for the second belt. It’s no secret, the guy [Pereira] who’s got the belt at 205 pounds now is a very good matchup for me, except for [if] I should get reckless standing with him. They say he has a lot of power, but I’ve never been edged out in that area. He used to fight at 185, too, and then moved up to 205. So I would like to fight at light heavyweight.'' [H/t: MMA Fighting]

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