Robert Whittaker has responded to Khamzat Chimaev.
Chimaev has recently come out and said he wants to fight Whittaker in his return to middleweight. He believes it would be a fun fight for the fans where the winner would also get the next title shot, and now Whittaker has responded and is open to making it happen.
“Oh yeah, cool – let’s do it,” Robert Whittaker told Submission Radio (h/t MMAJunkie). “Whatever. If it’s a fight that gets presented to me, then it is what it is. Yeah, I think it’d be a good fight. I think he’d be a hard fight. I think he’s a phenomenal fighter. I think he has a lot of strengths. I think I have a lot of strengths. I think I’m a hard fighter for him, just the same – and I’m quite good with my hands, can stuff a lot of takedowns. I’m hard to hold down. I’m squirmy, you see. Yeah, it’ll be an interesting fight. That’ll be a showstopper, for sure. I’m sure it’ll get a lot of people interested and excited.”
Although Robert Whittaker says he is interested in the matchup, ‘The Reaper’ believes it doesn’t make a ton of sense for him. He knows he’s getting the winner of Pereira-Adesanya 2 so the only reason he would take the scrap against Chimaev is to derail his hype.
“The reason why it would be a fight that’s worth making is because he’s riding the hype train, and because UFC want to bring this guy, who’s the boogeyman to a lot of guys, up in the rankings,” Whittaker said. “They want him to fight me at the top of the chain, so that it opens the door to whoever wins, and then jump behind. That’s the only reason it makes sense.”
Whittaker is currently 24-6 and coming off a decision victory over Marvin Vettori at UFC Paris last September.
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