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MMA: Mixed Martial Arts

Bo Nickal knows he has Khamzat Chimaev’s attention.

The three-time NCAA champion wrestler and blue-chip middleweight prospect continued his ascent this past Saturday with a second-round submission of Cody Brundage on the pay-per-view opener of UFC 300. The bout marked the first time Nickal has seen a second round in his nascent MMA career, but nonetheless preserved his undefeated 6-0 professional record. All six of those victories have ended in stoppages.

However, one man, in particular, was not impressed: Khamzat Chimaev. The two have traded barbs for much of the past year, and after the bout, Chimaev posted on social media that Nickal’s wrestling was “big bulls***.” Upon seeing it, Nickal was delighted.

“I love it,” Nickal said Wednesday on The MMA Hour. “I think the fact that he’s recognizing it, and I think he sees what’s coming too, I think that it’s good for everybody. Good for me, good for him, good for the sport. So we’re going to make that fight happen.

“I would just in response to that like to say, yo, who were you fighting at 5-0, bro? Some random dude in Europe? I’m fighting in the UFC on UFC 300, so there’s levels to this. And I think that people just need to get to know me. The more they get to know me, the more they’re going to realize that, hey, I’m that guy, and there’s nothing anybody else can do about that. I wouldn’t surprised if when we fight, I’m like a -1000 favorite, the same as I’ve been against all these other folks.”

Nickal, 28, has prodded Chimaev over a potential fight since formally joining the UFC in 2023. The decorated wrestler is widely considered to be one of the top prospects in all of MMA, and thus far his UFC results have validated that hype. Nickal earned a pair of first-round submissions over Zachary Borrego and Donovan Beard on the UFC’s Contender Series, then kickstarted his run in the promotion with quick submissions of Jamie Pickett and Brundage sandwiched between a 38-second knockout of Val Woodburn.

Nickal knows the Chimaev fight is one for the distant future, but he’s confident he’ll be able to handle the undefeated Chechen as easily as he did Brundage once they meet.

“I think I’d do very similarly to him what I did to this last guy — take him down, rag-doll him, throw him around,” Nickal said. “He’s not a big ‘85er, he gets tired. So is his first round going to be a little better, more competitive? Probably. But if that fight’s five rounds, I don’t think he makes it five rounds, if we’re being honest. And that’s, to me, kind of a general assessment. Will it be tough at the beginning? Is he going to come at me? Absolutely. But I don’t think he’s going be able to really hurt me or do anything that inflicts so much damage that I’m not going to able to just widen the gap on him as the fight continues.”

For now, Chimaev sits exactly where Nickal hopes to be in the future — smack dab in the thick of the middleweight title conversation. After dispatching his first seven UFC opponents, most of whom he handled with ease, Chimaev is set to take on former champ Robert Whittaker on June 22 in the headliner of the promotion’s debut trip to Saudi Arabia.

Nickal doesn’t much care who wins that matchup, although he acknowledged that if Chimaev is victorious, it only turns an inevitable showdown with “Borz” down the line into a bigger fight. So in that sense, he’s selfishly pulling for his rival to have a successful night — and Nickal believes the criticisms Chimaev has faced since his hard-fought win over former welterweight champ Kamaru Usman are overblown.

“I think anytime there’s praise and hype on somebody, it probably goes too far. Even with myself, I think that it can get out of hand quick,” Nickal said. “And there’s the negative side, there’s the positive side, and then reality is probably somewhere in the middle with everybody. And so I think that, with all that considered, I do believe that with his skills, he could still be champion, and he just has built himself such a reputation that guys are scared of him. Like, I guarantee you Whitaker is terrified of getting taken down, just because of his style and what he’s been able to do. Regardless of whether him and Usman had a close fight, he has built that reputation and solidified it.

“The difference with me is just like, I’ve also built my own reputation, I also know what I’m capable of, and I know for a fact there’s zero chance of him doing that to me, which is his strongest asset. So I think the reputation aspect has a lot to do with it, and why he has won the fights the way he’s won them, and why he competes the way he competes. But I do think he does have skills that, he could be the champion.”

As for his own immediate future, Nickal is already targeting a return to action in late July or early August.

“I want to start approaching the rankings here soon,” Nickal said. “It’s funny, because once you get in the rankings, you don’t really need to fight [everyone]. There’s 15 guys ranked, I don’t need to fight 15 guys to get the belt, right? I only need to fight two or three. So it’s like, if I fight a ranked guy, then it’s feasible that within six months I’m fighting for the belt.

“So I think that I want to get maybe one or two more guys that are a little bit better right outside the rankings, and then maybe early next year start [on] ranked guys, and then maybe 2025, fight for the belt. So that’s kind of where I see it going.”

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Featherweight champion Ilia Topuria was in attendance at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas for the historic UFC 300 event on April 13.  He was there for one reason, to see if Max Holloway defeated Justin Gaethje in their ‘BMF’ bout.  

Holloway did beat Gaethje and did so in highlight reel fashion.  With ten seconds remaining in the final round, Holloway was up on the scorecards.  Instead of coasting to the win, he pointed to the ground to signify his willingness to throw down until the end.  Gaethje obliged and found himself face down on the canvas with one second left on the clock.  

“I was just hoping him (Holloway) to win because if he was to win I was supposed to fight him next,” Topuria said on The MMA Hour.  “He did a great job.  To be honest, the greatest moments in the fight we all know was the last ten seconds.  Without that, I didn’t like the fight.  But what makes the fight special was the last ten seconds.  The real bad motherf**ker moment, so you have to give him his credit.”    

Topuria expects to face the former featherweight titleholder near the end of the year.  Holloway is ranked second in the division.  

“Hopefully we’re going to share the octagon until the end of the year,” Topuria said.  “You know what’s going to happen.”

Related: Joe Rogan reacts to Max Holloway’s ‘greatest knockout of all time’

“Fighting against me is going to be completely different because I don’t make any step backs.  All the time I walk forward.  I can wrestle.  I can go to the ground.  I can punch you and I move.  When I go inside that cage with a strategy.  I don’t go there just to throw some punches,” Topuria continued.  “Max Holloway, he’s next.  He’s next.”  

Topuria challenged Holloway to do what he did in the last ten seconds of the UFC 300 fight with Gaethje in the first ten seconds of the fight against him.  

“Just bring the same energy you had in the last ten seconds but bring it in the first ten seconds.  And we’ll see what’s going to happen.  Let’s bang,” Topuria said.    

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Some lady in California came extremely close to getting beat up after picking the wrong woman to test: a UFC women’s flyweight contender.

Some lady in California came real close to getting her butt kicked after trying to instigate a fight with the UFC’s Maycee Barber.

Barber is currently ranked No. 4 in the women’s flyweight division and is on a six fight winning streak. That could have been extended to seven if she was less patient during a recent parking lot incident captured by her friend and fitness model Demi Bagby.

The video shows Bagby and Barber confronting a woman who seems to be messing with their vehicle.

“Please stop touching my truck,” Bagby says.

“Well you know what, I don’t think you really bought that,” the woman replies, leaning on the truck door.

“Move me. Touch me,” the woman says in another clip. Then “Don’t touch me because I could bust you in your f—ing face … I could beat both of your f—ing asses, but I won’t.”

That leaves Barber and Bagby laughing, which is fortunate for this random woman because things could have taken a turn for the worse.

“California wildin’, someone come get your mom,” they captioned the video.

Barber’s latest win came at UFC 299 against Katyln Chookagian and puts her within striking distance of a title shot against current 125 pound champion Alexa Grasso. Unfortunately, there’s a bit of a logjam at the top of the division with Manon Fiorot and Valentina Shevchenko both in line for shots.

Barber will probably have to win one or two more (against non-Karens in the cage) before she gets a shot at UFC gold.

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MMA: Mixed Martial Arts

Adrian Lee, the 18-year-old prospect hailing from the same family as ONE Championship lightweight and welterweight champion Christian Lee and former ONE atomweight champion Angela Lee, is set to make his professional debut at the upcoming ONE 167 card, which takes place on June 8 from the Impact Arena in Bangkok, Thailand.

Lee clashes with Antonio Mammarella in a lightweight bout, which airs on Prime Video in the United States.

Lee is the youngest member of his family, with three older siblings who all competed in ONE Championship prior to his arrival.

He signed with ONE Championship this past December and now he’s set to make his debut in June.

Growing up in Hawaii, Adrian learned martial arts under his father while training alongside his siblings in what has become a family business in MMA.

His sister Angela became one of the faces of ONE Championship during her fast rise to fame before announcing her retirement from the sport this past September to focus on her mental health. Christian Lee currently holds titles at both welterweight and lightweight after he debuted for ONE as a teenager as well.

Adrian’s older sister Victoria also competed in ONE Championship before her tragic death in 2022.

The latest Lee sibling looks to carry on the family tradition against Mammarella, who sports a 1-0 record in his pro career with eight additional bouts as an amateur.

ONE 167 features an atomweight title fight at the top of the card as reigning champion Stamp Fairtex defends her belt against Denice Zamboanga in the main event.

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MMA: Mixed Martial Arts

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