“I’m going to smash everybody!” Five years since his debut, everyone believes Khamzat Chimaev is serious. On July 16, the then-26-year-old took on John Phillips and won the middleweight bout with a second-round submission. Dana White then got him to the Fight Island. Ten days later, he locked horns with Rhys McKee in the welterweight division. Impressing everyone, he didn’t let McKee land a single strike for a first-round finish and a 2-0 record. Just like that, Chimaev got White to admit, “This kid is one fight away from being a massive superstar.”

Fast forward to now, that fight has finally come. Chimaev will enter his dream fight for the middleweight champion crown at UFC 319. No wonder, he doesn’t want to let anything stop him as he prepares to “kill everybody.” But despite recording the fastest wins in UFC history as a debutant, many have cautioned him that his biggest opponent is not Dricus du Plessis in this bout, but his own conditioning.

Now, the undefeated fighter has been working on himself. The stakes in this fight, of course, are quite high– the title, his perfect record, and proving his critics wrong. He has already shared multiple videos of himself preparing to take down du Plessis. Adding more fuel to the fire was head coach Javier Mendez’s recent revelation that Chimaev is conditioning under his “good brother,” coach Ilir Latifi. For him, Chimaev already has a 5-round cardio to outlast the defending champion. Yet, the noise just won’t go. Seemingly, the Chechen warrior, too, has had enough.

In the latest video of UFC 319 Countdown, the Chechen juggernaut stated, “I’m focus on me. I’m ready for everything. I do my work, like wrestle with the guys. I know how to box with the guys. Same thing preparing for a fight. Work hard. People say like ‘Dricus has good cardio’, ‘He has good this’. And people watching me, like, ‘Oh Khamzat has bad this, bad this, he’s hype’. How many years I’ve been in the UFC, still people say ‘he’s hype.’

“I beat the world champion. I beat guys who been number 1 long time. (Kamaru) Usman and Robert Whittaker. We fought Dricus how many minutes? Dricus being take down from Robert Whittaker. Robert, he didn’t get me even one punch. Everyone I fought, they say like, ‘I’m preparing for war’. Why I should prepare for a war? If you want to win, you has to prepare for a kill, to destroy the guy.

“I’m ready for him. Everyone say, ‘Oh this is for a title fight for you.’ I just feels like, it feels the same. It doesn’t matter. Dricus is strong guy. A lot of good skills. But not my level. Striking, wrestling, grappling, I don’t see anywhere he can be better than me. So, I going for him. Going for the world. Bring one more hit home. Now we’re going for big gold.”

Since making his UFC debut in 2020, Chimaev has looked virtually unstoppable. In front of his ‘fastest wins in UFC history’ record and the names he has conquered, the “hype” criticism falls a little flat. In fact, at UFC 308, he dismantled Robert Whittaker in the very first round, leaving him frantically tapping out to a brutal face crank that broke some of The Reaper’s teeth. Dricus Du Plessis also faced Whittaker in his rise to the top at UFC 290, but it took him 2 rounds to get the finish.

Those words hang heavy. For ‘Borz,’ this isn’t just about surviving five rounds. It’s about imposing a pace and punishment that his opponent can’t recover from. Yet, cardio is the great equalizer in MMA. It’s the thing that has cost otherwise flawless fighters their crowns. And for Chimaev, the concern isn’t baseless. In three-round fights against Gilbert Burns and Kamaru Usman, he slowed down noticeably in the later stages.

Still, inside the Chechen warrior’s camp, confidence is high. His head coach, Joakin Karlsson, recently stated, “He has a different strength and conditioning coach now. It’s a different level now. I don’t think it’s fair to compare him to one, two years ago.”

And according to a UFC veteran, the questions about ‘Borz’ and his cardio may be the wrong dialogue, as he pointed to a legendary heavyweight who had similar performances late in his fights!

Chael Sonnen compares Khamzat Chimaev to Fedor Emelianenko in a defiant response to his ‘cardio critics’

Chael Sonnen isn’t buying the narrative that Khamzat Chimaev’s gas tank is his Achilles’ heel. Sure, the Chechen star has looked winded in later rounds before. But to Sonnen, that doesn’t automatically mean he’s vulnerable.

Speaking on The Bohnfire podcast, the outspoken UFC Hall of Famer brought up a name that instantly commands respect: Fedor Emelianenko. According to ‘The Bad Guy,’ “There’s this big question about Chimaev’s conditioning, and I don’t know if that’s fair. We’ve seen Chimaev get exhausted. But Fedor [Emelianenko] used to get exhausted and he never stopped. It never slowed him down. And it’s the same thing with Chimaev.”

Like Khamzat Chimaev, the heavyweight MMA legend sometimes looked drained mid-fight. Yet, he never stopped coming forward. As such, Sonnen argued that cardio isn’t always about looking fresh in the fourth or fifth round; it’s about whether you can still execute under fatigue.

He further stated, “I don’t think it’s fair to question his conditioning. I think he’s got a bunch of energy and he uses it all, which is what he’s supposed to do. That’s going to get tested, and we are going to find out if that’s accurate.”

Sonnen sees Chimaev as a fighter cut from a similar cloth to the old-school greats: explosive, relentless, and willing to burn through energy if it means breaking an opponent. And if he is right, UFC 319 could be less about who lasts longer and more about who can weather the storm without sinking! Many have already voted their confidence in Chimaev with the condition to keep his endurance up. Now, it seems like he truly is ready.