Clearing up any sort of confusion regarding a possible issue between the two, Chimaev explained that he looks up to the Dagestan native to this day.
“This guy (Khabib Nurmagomedov), we looked up to him (in the) beginning and now still look up to him,” Chimaev explained during a recent interview with FrontKick.online. “He (Khabib) [became] a champion, he’s one of the best fighters in the world. And people think I hate him. I love him because he’s Muslim. I’m Muslim. He come from some village like me, same country, same small Republic, like Chechnya, Dagestan. It’s the same. I have a lot of brothers from Dagestan. He’s Muslim, I’m Muslim, we’re brothers.“
“I answered to bullsh*t guy (during the Q&A), but nobody knows him,” Chimaev said. “It’s my [mistake) because I answer for him. He said like, ‘Khabib gonna smash you…’ If somebody say (sic) to you, ‘He gonna smash you,’ of course I’m gonna answer it like, ‘No, nobody gonna smash me. I’m gonna smash everybody. If you a (sic) real man, you have to think like that.” (H/T MMA News)