Carlos Barreto doesn’t see anyone stopping Khamzat Chimaev at middleweight after the Chechen-born Swede’s dominant performance against Robert Whittaker at UFC 308.
“Whittaker was the worst combination in the division for Chimaev,” said the UFC Fight Pass Brazil commentator on the Papo de Luta podcast. “I’ve always said that Whittaker is the most complete fighter in the division, not only because of his movement, but also because of his excellent takedown defense and good jiu-jitsu skills. Because of the dominant way Chimaev beat him, making it look easy, I have no doubt he will devastate the division.
“His physical imposition goes very well with his wrestling and jiu-jitsu technique. Anyone in the division who grapples with him is going to get hurt. But an unquestionable fact is that his physical imposition game depends on being healthy.”
While many fans are already starting to dream of a fight between Chimaev and current light heavyweight king Alex Pereira, Barreto believes the timing is not right for this pairing.
“Everything indicates that ‘Poatan’ will move up to heavyweight at the beginning of 2025. To do this, he needs to bulk up. When he makes this transition, it does not make any sense to come down to middleweight again,” he said. “On the other hand, Chimaev has to wait for the fight between [Dricus] Du Plessis and [Sean] Strickland to fight the winner, perhaps in the middle of 2025. The only way I see this happening is if Chimaev gets the middleweight belt and defends it once or twice. In this case, it could make sense to UFC to make a superfight with ‘Poatan’ at light heavyweight in 2026. Of course, ‘Poatan’ would have to beat [Magomed] Ankalaev before that. So there are too many ‘ifs’ to think about that now.”
