Khamzat Chimaev put together one of the most one-sided efforts in UFC title fight history against Dricus du Plessis, but a former UFC title challenger found a certain aspect of the performance frustrating.
While coming on as a guest on the Submission Radio platform, Dan Hardy discussed his thoughts on the UFC 319 pay-per-view headliner that saw Chimaev wrest the middleweight crown from DDP when they fought in Chicago.
While bringing up the numbers behind the dominant performance that ‘Borz’ had over the weekend, but also indicating an aspect of the in-cage effort from Chimaev that he wasn’t as keen on, Dan Hardy said,
“Just quickly want to bring up the stats as well before you go, which is what, 567 strikes from Khamzat, 37 of them significant, 21 minutes and 40 seconds control time, 70% takedowns. What are we looking at here? This is like when a kid plays the UFC game or something, right?”
“Like, this is like insane stuff. It was, I mean, it was overwhelming dominance, but it was just… it was frustrating that it was just, it wasn’t, there was not the intention to finish like there has been before.”
Khamzat Chimaev breaks record at UFC 319, previous record holder comments
Khamzat Chimaev broke a striking-based record against Dricus du Plessis and Chael Sonnen, who held the record previously, and has offered up his thoughts on being usurped by the 31-year-old. Chimaev connected on the South African combatant with over five hundred strikes connecting throughout the bout.
This eclipsed Sonne’s prior record of over three hundred strikes, which were notched in his prior middleweight title bid against Anderson Silva years back.
When the multi-division UFC title challenger addressed Chimaev breaking his record over the weekend on his personal YouTube channel, Sonnen stated [via MMA News],
“There was 537 strikes landed by Chimaev. Let me put that in perspective because I used to have the record. I had the record, and I crushed the record to win it, and I hit 311. 311 was the record. I know that for sure because I had it. He had 527 against 49 strikes.”
“So it was 10-to-1, Chimaev. When you see something that incredibly dominant, and there was all sorts of judges throwing up 10-8 rounds tonight, I mean, this was one of the most lopsided victories in history for a world championship.”