Robert Whittaker acknowledges that there wasn’t much he could do to stop Khamzat Chimaev from taking him down.
Chimaev (14-0 MMA, 8-0 UFC) ran through Whittaker (26-8 MMA, 17-6 UFC) for a first-round submission in their middleweight bout at UFC 308. The face-crank win resulted in Whittaker needing dental surgery. Whittaker broke down how the fight went down and rated Chimaev’s strength.
“Within seconds of the fight starting, I felt real comfortable standing with him, like real comfortable,” Whittaker said on his “MMArcade Podcast.” “Then the dude drops to like a millimeter. How do you stop that takedown? We did a lot of wrestling, we did a lot of wall work, but it’s so hard to replicate that sort of takedown, that sort of commitment. Props to him. Guy knows his strength and played into them to a tee and is willing to burn it all there for it.
“Takedown goes in, ankle picks me off the fence, it was a great takedown. It was a beautiful takedown. But then we get to the wall work, and I felt good. Like, he has really heavy sag. He’s not ridiculously strong or anything like that, but he had really heavy sag, and he was really good at making me work. He was really good and making sure he was active. He was always reaching for under-hooks, reaching for ankle picks, trying to get a hook in. Making me work, staying active.”
Whittaker was prepared for Chimaev’s explosive start but didn’t expect the face crank to cause so much damage.
“Even then, I knew that the squeeze that he was pushing on was going to be very hard to sustain that throughout the rounds,” Whittaker said. “We had five rounds, right? And I could feel some of the space opening up later on.
“Obviously it happens, we transition, then he puts his forearm across my face for the face crank. It was just picture perfect, landed square between my chin and my lip. It hits right there and instantly my teeth gave out. Obviously the squeezing after didn’t help, but they just gave out.”