“This Will Bother Some of You”: Chael Sonnen Names the Fighter Who Could Trouble Khamzat Chimaev

Khamzat Chimaev’s shutout of Dricus Du Plessis at UFC 319 put “Borz” squarely on the middleweight throne and instantly shifted the conversation to “who’s next?” Names like Islam Makhachev and Nassourdine Imavov are already in the orbit, but MMA legend Chael Sonnen just pointed at a very different problem for the champ: Bo Nickal.

On his YouTube channel, Sonnen argued that Chimaev hasn’t yet faced an elite wrestler who refuses to stay down. In his view, Nickal’s folkstyle pedigree—stand-ups, mat returns, constant base-building—would short-circuit the top control that carried Chimaev through five grinding rounds in Chicago. Paraphrasing Sonnen’s point: if you do ground Nickal, you won’t keep him there, and he’s not a fighter who settles for his back.

Now, the obvious caveats. Nickal isn’t in the top 15 and he’s coming off a loss—so a title shot feels remote in the near term. His striking is still catching up, and Chimaev’s physicality inside the clinch is a different kind of storm than most prospects have weathered. But stylistically? Nickal’s relentless ability to get back to his feet (and chain wrestle through rides and breakdowns) is exactly the sort of wrinkle that could force Chimaev to win a different kind of fight.

Meanwhile, the matchmaking board is crowded. Makhachev brings champion-vs-champion intrigue; Imavov offers a fresh, rangy test in-division. Whether Nickal gets fast-tracked or not, Sonnen’s take adds a juicy “what if” to a middleweight landscape that suddenly feels wide open.

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Internally, the chatter is that Chimaev’s team wants either a marquee crossover (Makhachev) or a straightforward divisional defense (Imavov) before entertaining out-of-sequence contenders. Nickal’s path likely runs through a ranked opponent this fall, followed by a co-main slot against a top-10 name. If he passes both with the kind of control-and-scramble game Sonnen is selling, the noise will be impossible to ignore.