Referee turned analyst John McCarthy has given his thoughts on a potential fight between Colby Covington and Khamzat Chimaev.
Covington is coming off a closely contested unanimous decision loss in his title rematch against Kamaru Usman at UFC 268, while Chimaev is coming off a spectacular first round finish of Li Jingliang at UFC 267.
With back-to-back defeats in title fights, Covington will be looking to bounce back in a strong fashion, and a win over Chimaev would certainly help. Earlier this week, ‘Chaos’ said that he would love to ‘expose’ the Chechen-Swede.
McCarthy On Potential Covington vs Chimaev Fight
Speaking on his Weighing In podcast, McCarthy gave his thoughts on a potential fight between Covington and Chimaev.
“Colby’s keeping his eyes on things and he’s saying ‘you might want to get him (Khamzat Chimaev) early in his UFC career and touch him up and try to get past him so you can say, ‘I’ve dealt with him, there’s no reason to fight him again,'” McCarthy said. “That might be a good way of looking at it but it also might be that you’re not giving that guy enough credit. He’s damn good and he can wrestle with you, no doubt. He’s a better striker than Colby and so it’s hard to say if his cardio can match Colby’s and that may be what Colby is looking at is ‘hey, I can push this guy and push him to break’ and maybe he can but it ain’t going to be an easy out. This is not one that you can sit there and say ‘oh that’s a good idea. Get him while he’s in that position where he doesn’t know anything or isn’t smart enough or isn’t going to bring in the same fight IQ as you can bring into [the fight].”
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