When Khamzat Chimaev predicted outcome of potential fights with Jon Jones and Shavkat Rakhmonov: "I will shoot him far away"

Khamzat Chimaev recently weighed in on the difficulty levels of potential fights against Jon Jones and Shavkat Rakhmonov. This was done during an interview on the TikTok account @Riadhlevrai where the rising UFC star was asked to rank the difficulties of hypothetical bouts on a scale of 1-10.

1 in this situation indicates a cartoonishly easy fight while 10 would be the marker for an immensely difficult fight. The early goings of the video saw Chimaev address some of the promotion's more prolific middleweights when he discussed Sean Strickland, Israel Adesanya, and his last opponent Robert Whittaker.

The middleweight contender would give each fighter scores of 5, 5 or 6, and 3 or 4, respectively. A couple of significant welterweight players were also touched upon with Chimaev giving former UFC welterweight champion Leon Edwards a score of 2 or 3 and Shavkat Rakhmonov a score of 5. When the reigning UFC heavyweight champion Jones was brought up in this context, Chimaev said,

"Nine. I will shoot him far away, man."

Check out the video of Khamzat Chimaev ranking all of these fighters below:

---

Khamzat Chimaev and what could be next

Khamzat Chimaev is coming off of a massive win over Robert Whittaker, as was mentioned above, but the exact next step remains unclear as of this writing. Chimaev now finds himself the number three ranked contender at 185 pounds following his first-round face crank finish over the number four ranked contender/ former UFC middleweight champion Robert Whittaker at UFC 308.

The 30-year-old is now only behind the previously referenced Strickland and Adesanya in the contender hierarchy. With Adesanya on the heels of a loss to reigning middleweight champion Dricus Du Plessis, it would seem like the next title contender is between Khamzat Chimaev and Sean Strickland.

'Borz' may even be the frontrunner potentially based on the quality of his last win which could possibly scuttle plans for a championship rematch between Strickland and Du Plessis. The 185-pound titleholder has indicated that the company wants him to fight at UFC 312 in Sydney although nothing has been officially locked in for Dricus Du Plessis on that card at this juncture.

Strickland has also indicated a lack of keenness on fighting in Australia, said he prefers March and remained adamant he was next in line for a title shot. In any event, the native of Russia is in a prime position in any event and it seems inevitable that Chimaev will contend for UFC gold in 2025 at some point or another.