UFC welterweight Neil Magny knows he’s no slouch on the mats, but paid dearly for underestimating Khamzat “Borz” Chimaev. Magny has been one of the loudest voices calling for a fight against the surging Chechen fighter, and got the chance to train with Khamzat, which did not go at all according to plan. Magny discussed their mat time in a recent episode of The MMA Hour.
“We had the opportunity to train in New York and the guy is definitely the real deal. The best way I can explain it is like, I f***** around and found out. Khamzat is definitely the real deal.
Neil Magny Trains With Chimaev, “F***ed Around and Found Out”
I went in there thinking, ‘Oh, here’s this sweet little wolf that I can train with in jiu-jitsu,’ and then things got real, real fast. There’s more hats to the guy, more so realizing, damn, this guy is actually the real deal. He’s not a fighter or fight I can take lightly at all. If I’m being honest, had I got that fight early on, I might have set myself up for failure, looking past him a little bit.” Magny detailed how quickly their training escalated into a brutal grappling match.
“Initially there wasn’t any tense moments at all, it was just an opportunity where it was like, ‘I’m here to train, you’re here to train,’ it was very respectful, going through the motions, not super competitive.
But that escalated very quickly. It went from that to a full on grappling match, getting slammed, all this kind of crazy stuff. So yeah, it definitely escalated quickly there.” Magny has no excuses, however, and still wants to face Chimaev in the Octagon.
“At the end of the day, I could make excuses for it. ‘Oh, I wasn’t giving it my all, maybe it was this, maybe the fact that he was bigger,’ I could give you a thousand reasons why that training session didn’t go in my favor, but at the end of the day, it didn’t, and that kind of gave me a dose of reality. Alright, you got some s*** to work on.
I’ll never be one of those guys to sit there and be like, ‘Oh, my opponent got lucky, this happened,’ or blame [anything]. I’m just not going to make an excuse for it. He definitely got the best of me that day, but I know that’s not the end of it. I know I have a lot more in me than what I showed that day and it’s just up to me to go out there and prove it.”
Does Neil Magny stand a chance against Khamzat Chimaev? Let us know in the comments.
