Khamzat Chimaev was asked to handicap both title fights at UFC 333, and in about four sentences he gave the most honest answer and the least scientific one. Speaking to Red Corner MMA ahead of Saturday’s card at the Etihad Arena in Abu Dhabi, Chimaev planted a flag for Movsar Evloev against Alexander Volkanovski in the main event. Then he threw his hands up on Petr Yan’s trilogy with Merab Dvalishvili.
Here’s the Evloev half: “Movsar, we’re from the same country, so hopefully we’re going for his belt.” He followed it with “We’re gonna take the belt and go home.”
And here’s the bantamweight half: “Petr and Merab, I don’t know,” Chimaev said. “This fight is gonna be crazy. I can’t (predict it).”
The second quote is the better handicapping.
The Evloev pick runs on geography
Look at the reason Chimaev gave for Evloev. Same country. That’s the whole argument. Bloody Elbow pointed out that Chimaev, Yan and Evloev were all born in Russia, but Yan isn’t from the North Caucasus. Chimaev is Chechen-born and now fights out of the UAE. Evloev is from Ingushetia. That regional bond is the line Chimaev drew, and it lands neatly on one side of his two countrymen.
I’ve made bets for dumber reasons. I once took a fighter because he had the same birthday as my ex-wife, which tells you how that went in both directions. Picking your guy because he’s your guy is what friends do at a barbecue. It’s a bad way to price a five-round title fight against a two-time featherweight champion.
Now, the annoying part for a cranky numbers guy is that Chimaev might be right for reasons he never mentioned.
Evloev is 10-0 in the UFC with zero stoppages. Every one of those wins went to the cards. People hear that and assume he lacks the killer gene. I see a guy who has won 10 fights in a row in the toughest promotion on earth without ever needing the judges to bail out a bad night or a lucky shot to bail him out of a bad round. You don’t go 10-0 on scorecards by accident. You go 10-0 on scorecards because you keep winning rounds, and a title fight is five of them.
That’s a real path to victory against Volkanovski, and it doesn’t require the emphatic finish Bloody Elbow says Evloev is planning. Frankly, a guy with no UFC stoppages promising an emphatic performance makes me nervous the same way I get nervous when I promise to stop playing parlays. If Evloev goes hunting for something he’s never done in 10 tries, against a fighter as experienced as Volkanovski, that’s how a disciplined decision machine turns into a guy chasing a highlight and eating counters. His best version on Saturday looks like his last 10 fights, stretched to 25 minutes.
So the Evloev pick is defensible. Chimaev just defended it with a map.
The shrug on Yan vs. Merab is the sharp take
This is where Chimaev earns some respect from me. Yan is the bantamweight champion making the first defense of his second title reign, and Dvalishvili is the man standing across from him for the third time. Trilogies are where confident predictions go to die. Both men have seen everything the other one has, and each has had two fights’ worth of tape to adjust.
Then there’s the camp wrinkle. Bloody Elbow reported that Dvalishvili ended his rivalry with Umar Nurmagomedov to gain access to Khabib’s gym before UFC 333. Think about that for a second. The Georgian challenger went into a North Caucasus room to prepare for a Russian champion who, by Chimaev’s own regional logic, isn’t one of the guys Chimaev is pulling for. You could build a whole conspiracy theory out of that if you were the type, and I’ve seen people bet on less.
Chimaev looked at that matchup and said he can’t predict it. Fighters almost never say that. They pick their friend, or they pick the guy who’d make the better future opponent, or they offer some polite line about the better man winning on the night and wink. Saying “I don’t know” about a crazy fight is the closest thing to sharp handicapping you’ll hear from an active fighter this week.
Where I land
Chimaev’s confidence is pointed at the right fighter for the wrong reason, and his uncertainty is pointed at the right fight for the right reason. If I’m building a card from his comments, I’m ignoring the part about being from the same country and keeping the part about Evloev being undefeated and never needing a finish to win. The Yan fight is the one I’d want to see the number on before I touch it, and I suspect it’ll look a lot tighter than the gold-for-the-home-team crowd wants it to.
Yan and Dvalishvili go first on Saturday, Oct. 24. Then Evloev gets his five rounds with Volkanovski, and if he wins, expect the judges to hand him the belt.
