Joe Rogan Said Chimaev Has Been Winning Because He Hasn't Wrestled Anyone — Burns And Usman Were The Real Tests

Joe Rogan spent part of episode #2487 of his podcast, released April 22 with Action Bronson, explaining that Khamzat Chimaev was, in fact, a freak. Then he spent the rest of it explaining why we didn't actually know how big a freak yet.

"His timing and his takedowns is f**king insane. So good," Rogan said of the UFC middleweight champion, who headed into UFC 328 against Sean Strickland on May 9 with a 15-0 record and a highlight reel that included Robert Whittaker, Dricus du Plessis (the title win), Gilbert Burns, and Kamaru Usman. Then he added the part nobody who had been losing money on Chimaev parlays wanted to hear: "He's handling guys that don't have a big background in elite wrestling."

It was a thesis that required going through Chimaev's record and finding the moments his opponents actually hit back. Rogan, who had watched all of those fights from inside the cage, named two: Gilbert Burns and Kamaru Usman.

Burns pushed Chimaev to a decision in 2022 in what most people remembered as the Fight of the Year. Usman stepped up at middleweight on short notice and, as Rogan put it on the podcast, "in the third round, Kamaru was winning." Both were jiu-jitsu black belts. Usman was also a two-time NCAA Division II All-American wrestler. Both were also the only two opponents in Chimaev's career to make him work for more than one round.

Everyone else, in Rogan's framing, had been collateral damage from a man who walks across the cage and replaces your hips with his. Whittaker was a black belt but never wrestled at a high level. Du Plessis had good takedowns by MMA standards and bad ones by wrestling standards. Li Jingliang got walked into a D'Arce in less than three minutes. Kevin Holland was on his back inside of two.

That didn't mean Chimaev wasn't great. It meant the test that would actually answer the question, what happens when Chimaev shoots on someone who shoots back from the same level, had been administered exactly twice. One answer was "you go to a decision." The other was "you nearly lose round three."

That was an awkward thesis to defend two weeks out from a first title defense.

Strickland was not the answer to the wrestling question. He was the inverse of it. Rogan, on the same podcast, conceded the matchmaking conundrum directly: "Strickland is not an easy guy to take down and he's not an easy guy to hold down." Strickland's defensive wrestling had a reputation as a high bar. Notoriously hard to put on his back, harder to keep there. But he had never wrestled at a level that would qualify as "elite background" by Rogan's own bar. He was a professional MMA fighter who got good at not getting wrestled. That was a different test.

So the question Rogan was implicitly asking, does Chimaev's wrestling actually beat elite wrestlers, was not getting answered on May 9 in Newark either. Whatever happened at UFC 328, the boxes that would get checked were "can Chimaev hold down a stylist with sneaky takedown defense" and "can Strickland survive five rounds underneath a 185-pound battering ram." Those were interesting boxes. They were not the box Rogan was talking about.

The box Rogan was talking about got a stamp three weeks later, if anything went according to plan.

On April 18, Chimaev signed with Eric Bischoff's RAF Wrestling promotion. The deal was announced live on the RAF 08 broadcast. He was scheduled to wrestle at cruiserweight, with the date floating between RAF 09 (May 30 in Arlington, Texas) and RAF 10 (June 13) depending on how UFC 328 went. Chimaev publicly offered $200,000 to face an Olympic gold medalist. The RAF Wrestling champion answered the call instead.

This was the joke. The man Rogan was calling under-tested had volunteered, on his own dime and in front of a wrestling audience, to take exactly the test Rogan said he hadn't taken. He didn't even wait for the title fight to be over.

There was a version of this where you read the timeline as a vote of confidence. Chimaev knew what the question was, and he was answering it. There was another version where you read it as a tell. He was defending a UFC middleweight title against a guy famous for getting punched in the face for twenty-five minutes, and his idea of a real stress test for his actual game was to drive to Texas the next month and try to outscramble somebody with a Big Ten medal.

Both readings could be true. Probably were.

Burns, for what it was worth, had retired two weeks prior. He left his gloves in the cage at UFC Winnipeg on April 12 after losing to Mike Malott. Twelve IBJJF world titles, a UFC welterweight title shot, the most recent reminder that Chimaev was not invincible. Now he was a coach. Usman was 38, on a four-fight losing streak, last competed in November of 2024. Neither one was walking it back through the rankings to give Chimaev a third bite.

Which left the next set of "elite wrestlers" Rogan was asking for, and on the current middleweight roster, the list was short. The actual American wrestling-pedigree guys at 185 were mostly fighting people who didn't shoot at all. The "real test" Rogan was invoking had, if you looked at the actual division, mostly already happened. Twice. Both close. Both wins.

The interesting thing about Rogan's argument wasn't that it was wrong. It was that it might have been the kind of argument that didn't get an answer at the UFC. The wrestlers on Chimaev's level at 185 were mostly wrestling on the wrestling card on June 13.

For practitioners watching this with grappler eyes, and that was most of the people reading bjjproblems, there was a smaller, more useful version of this question. It was the thing every brown belt who had been to a few opens had wondered: is the guy in your division dominating because he's that good, or because the bracket isn't deep? The sport asked itself that constantly. The answer was usually yes. Both. The dominant guy was the dominant guy because he was that good and because the bracket wasn't deep, and the moment the bracket got deeper, the dominant guy adjusted or he didn't.

Chimaev was the dominant guy. The bracket wasn't deep. May 9 wasn't going to be the test. May 30 might have been.

The funny part was he set it up himself.

This post was generated by AI. Sources are linked below. Follow @bjj-problems on YouTube for the weekly video digest.

Sources

• Joe Rogan: Khamzat Chimaev Has Been Winning Because He's Not Matched With Elite Wrestlers — BJJ Doc
• Joe Rogan discredits Khamzat Chimaev while detailing the problems he could face at UFC 328 — Bloody Elbow
• UFC 328: Chimaev vs. Strickland — Official Event Page
• Khamzat Chimaev signs for RAF Wrestling debut weeks out from UFC 328 fight with Sean Strickland — Bloody Elbow
• Khamzat Chimaev's $200,000 call for Olympic gold medalist answered by RAF Wrestling champion — Bloody Elbow