Khamzat Chimaev has been dominating the competition in MMA and now it seems like he might have his sights set on a detour to another sport, as he decided to call out Gordon Ryan. While that might seem like a strange idea initially, it’s relatively common for MMA fighters to test themselves against professional grapplers on the mats. The idea hasn’t come completely out of nowhere either, as Ryan has previously said that he would beat Chimaev or any other MMA fighter in a grappling match.
On paper it would appear as though Gordon Ryan would have a significant size advantage over Khamzat Chimaev given that he last competed in the over 99kg division at ADCC, while Chimaev historically competes at either welterweight (77kg) or middleweight (84kg) in MMA. It’s worth noting that Ryan could have made the under 99kg division at ADCC 2022, but he wanted to move up in weight to challenge himself and make history by winning three different weight classes.
As for Chimaev, it’s common knowledge that huge weight-cuts are a part of competing in professional MMA and it’s likely that he would walk around at a weight not too far away from Ryan’s regular weight. He’s also been open about wanting to face former UFC heavyweight world champion Francis Ngannou in a grappling match before too, so it’s clear that any weight disadvantage is not something that bothers him:
“Gordon Ryan, brother… you get sick. I hope soon you get healthy and I meet you brother, on the mats.”
While Chimaev has plenty of reason to be confident in his grappling abilities, his successes against elite grapplers have so far been exclusively in the cage. It would definitely be interesting to see how Khamzat Chimaev fares in a professional grappling match, but competing against Gordon Ryan is something that the vast majority of BJJ specialists struggle with. If Chimaev does want to start competing in the sport, it would be much more interesting to see him in an appropriate weight class at ADCC instead.
Khamzat Chimaev uploaded a video of him challenging Gordon Ryan to a match in a recent video that was uploaded to his official YouTube channel:
