Glover Teixeira shuts down rumored Alex Pereira vs Khamzat Chimaev fight: “This fight is all talk”
Glover Teixeira has shut down the idea of Alex Pereira defending his middleweight title against Khamzat Chimaev.
There’s often a lot of talk surrounding Khamzat Chimaev, with much of it coming from the man himself. ‘Borz’ regularly goes after his rivals on social media and, more often than not, makes it clear that he wants to fight as much as he possibly can. Lately, he’s been focusing his attention on UFC middleweight champion Alex Pereira.
The pair had some words via various interviews with Chimaev wanting to try and take the Brazilian’s newly-won belt away from him.
Now, Pereira’s training partner Glover Teixeira has opted to weigh in on the situation.
“This fight is all talk,” he said about Pereira vs. Chimaev. “I usually don’t get into talk that doesn’t make any sense, but to light heavyweight, this guy says he accepted it. I remember Alex calling Jorge and saying, ‘Hey Jorge, let’s fight in Brazil.’
“I said, ‘What are you doing? You fight in Brazil? Your legs are hurt. You kicked so much, your shins are hurt. You haven’t recovered. Just chill for a while.’ And he’s like, ‘Yeah, but this guy’s talking, I’ll fight him at 205. I don’t want to cut the weight.’ I said, ‘Yeah, you can’t cut the weight.’ Alex is a very strong mind.”
Chimaev wants Pereira
Teixeira went on to note that he imagines Pereira will struggle to make middleweight in the future.
“Eventually, yes,” he said. “He’s much too big, and eventually, that weight cut is going to stress him out and he’s going to talk about 205. When we started doing wrestling workouts with him, he started getting muscles, massive. He got at least 10 to 15 pounds of muscle before he started doing the wrestling. Before, he used to do the kickboxing, running, kickboxing, so it was more like cardio. Now, he’s got to do all these weights, sprawl, all these crazy things, and he’s getting bigger and bigger.”
Quotes via MMA Fighting
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