Khamzat Chimaev would simply not be denied.
The feared fighter vowed to “smash everybody” when he joined the UFC five years ago accompanied by massive expectations and he can now call himself a champion after defeating Dricus Du Plessis to win the middleweight title Saturday night in the main event of UFC 319 in Chicago.
Chimaev has been considered the most dominant grappler in all of mixed martial arts and those skills were on full display as he swept the scorecards en route to a unanimous decision victory.
Although his smothering style resulted some in boos from the crowd at United Center, Chimaev was dominant from the very start.
Chimaev took Du Plessis down immediately within the first 10 seconds of the fight and quickly pinned Du Plessis in a crucifix position. Chimaev began landing small punches the side of the head but Du Plessis defended well and absorbed little damage in the first five minutes.
The pair exchanged high kicks at the start of Round 2 before Chimaev resumed his wrestling attack and began kneeing the thighs and legs of Du Plessis. Chimaev continued riding the back of his opponent and Du Plessis was forced to focus solely on defending submission setups.
Chimaev trapped Du Plessis in another crucifix for roughly half of Round 3 and continued his top pressure for nearly all of Round 4. He accumulated more than four minutes of control time in each of the first four rounds.
The final round was the most competitive, however Chimaev still controlled more than half the round on the ground even though Du Plessis ended up landing more significant strikes than the new champ in Round 5.
Chimaev landed a remarkable 529 total strikes compared to just 45 from Du Plessis throughout the 25-minute bout, even though the overwhelming majority of Chimaev’s strikes were not significant strikes. Chimaev landed 131 total strikes in Round 1 but only one was deemed significant; he landed 79 in Round 2 but only four significant; his best round was Round 3 with 156 total strikes, 19 of which were significant; 76 total strikes in Round 4 but just four significant and only nine of the 87 total strikes he landed in Round 5 were credited as significant strikes.
When all was said and done, the key stats were him being successful on 12 of 17 takedown attempts and the fact he racked up 21:40 of control time.
The problem for Du Plessis was he simply could not create any time or space to land much offence of his own.
The South African star managed to reverse position a couple times in Round 5, attempting a guillotine choke and a late rear-naked choke, both of which Chimaev was able to escape and regain top control.
“The man has incredible control on the top,” Du Plessis said after this first loss in the UFC. “He’s just a blanket. It’s almost as if he knew what your next move was going to be, and he got it without using too much power. … He beat me fair and square tonight.”
Du Plessis told Sportsnet’s Aaron Bronsteter earlier this week he figured this matchup would go one of two ways: either Chimaev would come out super aggressive and look to end the fight early like he did against Robert Whittaker last year, or Chimaev would be wary of potentially fatiguing and pace himself early since it was Chimaev’s first five-round fight and first UFC main event.
It turns out Chimaev did come out aggressive but never ended up fatiguing.
The 31-year-old was born and raised in Chechnya, spent a decade living in Sweden and is now representing the United Arab Emirates. He entered the weekend as the betting favourite over the incumbent champ after amassing a perfect 8-0 record in the UFC and 14 consecutive wins in MMA since debuting in 2018.
The standout wrestler was considered a blue-chip prospect from the moment he first stepped into the Octagon in the summer of 2020. Chimaev fought three times during his first three months in the UFC. First he submitted John Phillips in a middleweight contest, then beat Rhys McKee by TKO just 10 days later in a welterweight bout. He followed that up by knocking out veteran middleweight Gerald Meerschaert in just 17 seconds back up in the 185-pound division.
After experiencing some minor setbacks to his momentum due to various injuries and illness, Chimaev eventually added wins over Li Jingliang (first-round submission), Gilbert Burns (unanimous decision) and Kevin Holland (first-round submission) to his record before moving back up to middleweight.
Chimaev defeated former welterweight champion Kamaru Usman by three-round majority decision in 2023 in a short-notice matchup that Usman had accepted on less than two weeks’ notice and pushed Chimaev hard for three rounds.
The fight that earned Chimaev a title shot was yet another first-round win when Chimaev tapped out Whittaker, the former middleweight champion, at UFC 308 in October. Chimaev dominated Whittaker and finished him with a vicious face crank submission that resulted in Whittaker requiring dental surgery afterwards.
Chimaev is now 9-0 in the UFC, which was Du Plessis’s UFC record prior to UFC 319.
Du Plessis also debuted in the UFC in 2020. Chimaev was already 3-0 in the UFC when Du Plessis burst onto the scene with a knockout win over Markus Perez. He faced progressively more difficult opponents over the years and broke through to the upper tier of the division with a technical knockout win over Whittaker in 2023 that earned him a title shot. Du Plessis became champion in January 2024 after winning a five-round split decision over Strickland in the main event of UFC 297 in Toronto. His first successful title defence was one year ago when he submitted Israel Adesanya at UFC 305 then ran it back with Strickland, winning a dominant five-round decision earlier this year at UFC 312 in February.
Du Plessis, now 9-1 in the UFC, vowed to come back stronger and eventually reclaim the title.
It’s unclear who Chimaev’s first title defence will be against, yet the UFC has a handful of options to consider.
Recent main event winners and top middleweight contenders Reinier de Ridder and Anthony Hernandez were in Chicago watching the event, as was Ciao Borralho who headlines UFC Paris in a few weeks against Nassourdine Imavov in what could end up being a title eliminator.
Also at UFC 319, Lerone Murphy made a case for getting the next featherweight title shot by welcoming former Bellator MMA star Aaron Pico to the UFC in a rather unceremonious fashion.
Murphy put Pico to sleep with a spinning elbow knockout in the opening round of the co-main event. The 34-year-old from Manchester, England is 17-0-1 as a pro with nine consecutive wins at the UFC level.
Reigning featherweight titleholder Alexander Volkanovski posted, “See you in December,” on social media and congratulated Murphy moments after the knockout.
That wasn’t the only spinning elbow KO of the night as the preceding fight ended in the same way as Carlos Prates got back in the win column with a highlight knockout of Geoff Neal in welterweight action. Prates lost a five-round decision to Ian Machado Garry in their April Fight Night main event that snapped an 11-fight winning streak. Prates took Neal out with a spinning elbow KO at the end of Round 1.
Prates is from Brazil and after the win called for a spot on the upcoming Oct. 11 Fight Night card scheduled to take place in Rio de Janeiro. Prates has five knockout wins since 2024 which is more than any other fighter during that time.
Michael “Venom” Page styled on Jared Cannonier early in their middleweight matchup and ended up winning a unanimous decision.
The 38-year-old from England isn’t a natural middleweight but moved up from welterweight earlier this year to pursue a fun style clash with fellow striker Shara Magomedov. Page beat Magomedov in February and stuck around in the division for this matchup with one-time title challenger Cannonier, who won the final round but it was too little, too late.
Kai Asakura fell to 0-2 in the UFC after being submitted by Tim Elliott in the opening bout of the main card. Asakura made his debut in December in a title fight against Alexandre Pantoja but was tapped out in the second round of that matchup as well. Elliott hadn’t fought since a submission win over Sumudaerji more than a year and a half ago.
UFC 319 was the organization’s eighth event in Chicago and the first trip there since 2019.
