Bo Nickal Points To One Key Advantage He Has Over Khamzat Chimaev

One of the more intriguing fights that could be made in the UFC’s middleweight division is a matchup between Khamzat Chimaev and Bo Nickal. If that bout does get booked, Nickal is confident that he has one advantage over Chimaev.

“That’s the fight I’ve been wanting for a long time,” Nickal said on YouTube. “We’ll make it happen. I think that… that fight is massive. It’s been talked about since I [first] started MMA, and so I feel like the proper circumstance is for the belt. It has to be for the belt in my mind.

“It changes the timeline a little bit because it’s like, let’s see, if I get into the rankings and he’s number whatever, we can fight, but I feel like that it’s owed to, I think, us as fighters, to the fans, to the MMA community, for that to be a world championship fight and I can’t wait. Because at the end of the day, for me, the idea is I want to fight the best guys in the world. It’s not, ‘This guy sucks, this guy sucks, I’m so much better than everybody,’ it’s like, that guy is freaking good. He’s a savage. He’s a beast.”

“I think that he’s good, he’s got skills, but his biggest thing that’s going to crush him, especially [in] the fight against me is, dude, you’re going to get tired. You’re going to [fall down energy wise], and I’m going to go [up] as they fight goes on,” Nickal added.

“You’re not going to take me down, which is your best attribute, so you’re going to have to strike with me. I’m probably going to take you down — maybe I don’t hold you down on the ground forever, but I can hold you down there for a little bit. And the longer the fight goes, the worse it’s going to get, so that’s kind of my view of it from 30,000 feet and trying to take all of the information that we have and look at it from a realistic perspective.”

Bo Nickal

Nickal joined the UFC in 2023 after one fight on an iKON FC card and two bouts on the Dana White Contender Series. Nickal won those contests by stoppage in the first round (two submissions, one KO). None of the matchups went past 62 seconds of the first round.

Since his debut with the promotion in March 2023, Nickal has compiled a 4-0 UFC record with two submissions, one knockout and one decision. In his most recent outing, Nickal went the three-round distance with Paul Craig on the pay-per-view portion of the UFC 309 fight card.

I wrote the following after that win:

Bo Nickal went 15 minutes for the first time in his MMA career against Paul Craig at UFC 309. While Nickal looked decent against Craig, the fight showed that he needs some more seasoning before he’s ready to compete against the elite of the UFC’s middleweight division.

Nickal needs to work on his striking and distance management. Craig, who is not an elite striker, did a decent job in keeping Nickal at distance, but Nickal was able to land with power, by throwing some somewhat sloppy strikes. Nickal came into UFC 309 with a lot of hype behind him. I don’t think that hype disappears after UFC 309, but Nickal’s performance showed he has a lot of work to do.

Nickal did not break into the UFC middleweight rankings with his victory over Craig.

Khamzat Chimaev

Chimaev is the No. 3 fighter in the official UFC middleweight rankings.

Chimaev sports a 14-0 record. While he has been a fast starter who has faded down the stretch, Chimaev has only gone the distance twice in his career. He is coming off a dominant submission win over former UFC middleweight champion Robert Whittaker at UFC 308 in October.

Neither Bo Nickal or Khamzat Chimaev currently have a fight booked on the UFC 2025 schedule.