Khamzat Chimaev was born on May 1, 1994, at the village of GVARDEYSKYYY, Chechnya. Chimaev carries a lot of colors of the shirt: claiming to be the Chechnya, Chimaev mainly the upper radio under the Swedish flag color (he emigrated here in 2013) and recently, Chimaev turned to UAE nationality since 2023.
The main impression that the audience for the “gray wolf” Chimaev is a reckless guy, ready to keep the radio continuously, and at the same time still devoted the eye -catching matches. In 2020, in just 66 days, Chimaev had three times, won 3 Performance of the Night awards, ending every match thanks to Knockout or Submission.
This is also a record of the continuous winning series in the shortest time that a boxer has ever done at UFC, if not counting the early UFC also played a live prison, so that Royce Gracie could win 4 matches in just one night.
Chechnya blood of “gray wolf”
Khamzat Chimaev was born just a few months before the first Chechnya war opened. The British village is only about 80km from Grozny's city, where most conflicts take place.
The conflict between Russia and the rebel Chechen continued for the first two years of Khamzat Chimaev's life. Chimaev said that he had no clear memories of violence, but he still remembered the effects from the dark side of the war.
“After the war, there were countless buildings collapsed. I also remembered that there were many cars, and the army, they went to my house, checked my house,” Chimaev recalled.
“Mom always gives everything to us. When I was young, I did not understand why she always gave food for each child, then waited for us to finish eating, so she ate what was left over. Only came to grow up, I understood what it meant.”
Father went to work outside Chechen, his mother was busy with work, the boy Khamzat Chimaev gradually grew up with 4 other siblings. In particular, the person with the greatest influence on Khamzat is the British Artur Chimaev, who is also a Wrestling athlete and is still accompanying Khamzat in matches.
Like most Chechnya children, Khamzat Chimaev started practicing Wrestling animals from 6. From a young age, Chimaev had a very drastic, even extreme personality, especially when involved in the problem of winning and losing.
“The boy's head is extremely tumor,” Arturaev said that he once had to ask the knife in Khamzat's hand, when his younger brother was bruised at home and wanted to take a knife to take revenge on his two bullies on the street. At that time, Khamzat was only 10, 11 years old.
“With any quarrel, fighting, Khamzat wants to” play “to the end, want to win, in all costs, by all means. It is like that from a young age.”
Journey to MMA
In 2012, Artur Chimaev came to Sweden to cure the shoulder injury due to Wrestling, and then a year later, Mother, Khamzat Chimaev, along with an older brother and an older sister also migrated to Sweden. Four people live in a small apartment, in a village south of the country. Chimaev was 19 years old.
Khamzat Chimaev got the job of loading the boxes on the truck from the cold storage of a poultry processing factory thanks to his brother. He continued to play Wrestling, very successful with 3 times winning gold in national competitions. However, Chimaev is not eligible for Sweden to attend the Olympics, and the fact that Chimaev has no clear nationality is also a regular obstacle when he wants to participate in international competitions.
While feeling that it was hard to go further in the Wrestling field, Khamzat Chimaev saw the match that Conor McGregor used only 13 seconds to defeat Jose Aldo, and become a new champion of Featherweight.
“I believe that if Conor McGregor could do it, I could,” Chimaev said. “I have a stronger spirit than him. My physical body is bigger than him. I feel, if I confront, I can crush him. If McGregor earn that money, why not?”
The idea came from that time, but also needed to wait until 2 years later, Khamzat Chimaev left the job of loading, despite the opposition of his mother and brother, driving to Stockholm alone to “head” into MMA.
The first day of the “gray wolf” at Allstar Training Center, the largest MMA “headquarters” in Sweden, was not smooth – he was an excellent Wrestling athlete, but still fuzzy chicken when entering MMA. With the head of the tumor head, Khamzat Chimaev even scuffled with two other boxers on the first day to practice.
In the risk of luck, the scuffle caused the head coach of Allstars Stockholm, Andreas Michael, along with CEO Majdi Shammas, realized the potential of Khamzat Chimaev.
The new problem appears: Chimaev has no money to stay in the city. There is also no way for Chimaev to practice effectively, when he takes up to 4 hours of driving to go home in the middle of his village with Stockholm. CEO Shammas proposes a solution: Chimaev can stay in the gym. He spreads the mattress, arranged clothes, sleeped in a small hin -shaped storage room without windows, under the wooden stands.
Chimaev did not even find a part -time job in Stockholm to get money to eat. Instead, he spent all his time on training, about 3-4 shifts every day, so that Andreas Michael had to force Chimaev to rest to avoid injury. After practicing, Chimaev will go back to the room, watch movies from mobile phones, and if he cannot sleep, he will pound sandbags, practice alone in the gym.
Success at UFC
The drastic perseverance of Khamzat Chimaev, of course, made him uncomfortable, but in return, his MMA level progressed very quickly. From a “matte chicken” MMA, Chimaev began to have professional matches, starting to have Sparring with UFC generals like Alexander Gustafsson or Ilir Latifi.
CEO Majdi Shammas even introduced Khamzat Chimaev with the people who match the UFC Sean Shelby matches early, but UFC did not rush to sign a contract with Chimaev, due to his upper experience that day was few. Only in July 2020, UFC hurriedly called Khamzat Chimaev to come, replacing Duško Todorović confronted with John Phillips.
The victory of the submission in the debut battle immediately resonated for Chimaev. 10 days later, Chimaev won Knockout Rhys McKee in a Middleweight match. It is the shortest gap between two consecutive victories in modern UFC history.
Not only that, the overwhelming parameters that Chimaev created in those victories made viewers cold. In the match against Phillips, the total number of Total Strikes between Chimaev and the opponent is 124-2. In the match against McKee, that number was even more scary, 68-0.
It seems that all that is not enough, at the 3rd battle at UFC, Khamzat Chimaev only needs 17 seconds to knockout Gerald Meerschaert. Chimaev's reputation exploded after one night – everyone wanted to know more about “gray wolf”, the boxer still lived in the storage of the gym's map despite signing a contract with UFC.
Unfortunately, at the end of November 2020, Khamzat Chimaev was positive for Covid. His condition was quite heavy, so much that Chimaev thought that he would have to give up the ring.
“UFC brought Khamzat to the US for treatment. At that time, no one beside it,” Artur Chimaev said on Smesh Bros. “It is said that Khamzat may have cancer, need to monitor further. After that he still goes to practice, feels exhausted, vomits blood. Instagram post says it wants to retire when it is facing all that.”
In the midst of that situation, Ramzan Kadyrov – the head of Chechnya – called, arranged a private aircraft to bring Khamzat Chimaev to Chechnya for treatment. Thankfully, it turned out that Chimaev did not get cancer, but only had a complication of Covid, causing Khamzat to have pulmonary fibrosis. Chimaev continues to treat in Chechnya for more than 2 weeks before recovery and can be exercised again.
Since then, Chimaev has only added 3 times in 2021-2022, but the quality is always guaranteed, with a title of Performance of the Night before Li Jingliang and a Fight of the Night before Gilbert Burns.
At UFC 294 this weekend, Khamzat Chimaev would have been upstream with Paulo Costa. However, due to Costa injury, Chimaev's opponent changed to former Kamaru Usman. This is considered a more difficult opponent than expected-Usman, after all, has successfully defended the championship 5 times, and until now still ranked 7th in the Pound-For-Pound UFC chart.
“Will never know, you can predict the match in a really accurate way,” Khamzat Chimaev said about the upcoming match.
“Everyone said they would hit this, would do that, that, and then everything in the cage would happen in a very different way. So I would not make any predictions. For example, right in the time for Gilbert Burns, I have learned many things from there.