Khamzat Chimaev has reached a point where conversations about him no longer start with if he can be beaten, but with how. After bulldozing Dricus du Plessis at UFC 319 and claiming the middleweight title, the numbers told a story that words struggled to soften. More than 21 minutes of control time. Twelve takedowns. A 50-44 sweep across all three scorecards.

So where’s the crack? Is there one at all? According to Joe Rogan, if you’re looking for a blueprint to stop Chimaev, it doesn’t start with bravado or toughness. It starts with something far rarer.

The UFC color commentator addressed the question on JRE MMA Show #171 alongside Brendan Allen, and his answer didn’t leave much room for debate. A clip from the conversation was shared on X by Red Corner MMA, where Rogan says, “The thing is, it’s like these gaps in wrestling, these gaps in grappling.”

He explained that when high-level grapplers face elite strikers, even well-rounded ones, the separation becomes unavoidable. “When a guy’s a really good grappler and then you’re taking on a guy like Dricus, he’s really a striker. He’s a good grappler, a good jiu-jitsu guy. But there’s levels.”

That word, levels, is doing a lot of work here. Rogan didn’t dismiss Du Plessis’ skill set. But he did frame the problem clearly. Against someone like Chimaev, good isn’t enough.

“And the kind of guy like Khamzat,” Rogan added, “like, man, you gotta be a f—- Olympic-caliber wrestler to scrap with that guy.”

At UFC 319, Chimaev landed 131 of 137 strikes in the first round alone, a ninety-five percent accuracy rate. But only two of those were classified as significant, because most came from top position, in a crushing crucifix that flattened Du Plessis and erased his offense before it could start. Across five rounds, Chimaev’s wrestling didn’t just win minutes. It erased all weapons that could be aimed against him.

That’s why Joe Rogan’s point lands so cleanly. There are no half-measures here. You can’t ‘scramble a little’ with Chimaev (unless you’re someone like Gilbert Burns or Kamaru Usman, but even they had to go through the grinder and still came up short). You can’t hang on and hope to strike later. His background as a three-time Swedish national freestyle wrestling champion isn’t just a line on a résumé. It’s the foundation of everything he does.

The real question isn’t who wants to fight Khamzat Chimaev. It’s who in the division is actually built to survive him, but it’s not just middleweights that have to be worried about running into ‘Borz’ now!

Khamzat Chimaev takes aim at Alex Pereira as he lays out his plans for the future

If his recent interview with ESPN is anything to go by, the undefeated champion already has one foot out the door. Khamzat Chimaev made it clear he plans to defend his middleweight title just once more before shifting his focus upward. The timing matters. He’s targeting a defense after Ramadan in March, then turning his attention to light heavyweight. Why the rush? Motivation, or lack of it.

Chimaev said, “These [middleweight] fights don’t make me excited, but I need to do my job, I need to make money. If there is a big name to make more money, then I will be excited. If you get $3 million for a fight, but then you have a good [opponent] and you make $6 million, of course you’ll be excited.”

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The honesty is striking, and that mindset changes everything. At 185 pounds, the path is clear but uninspiring to him. The likely No. 1 contender is Nassourdine Imavov, a fighter Chimaev openly said he’d rather not face because they trained together. He wouldn’t refuse it, but there’s no spark there. The alternative, the winner of Sean Strickland vs. Anthony “Fluffy” Hernandez, offers competition, not obsession.

His real interest sits one division above. Chimaev didn’t dance around it. His goal is Alex Pereira.

As he revealed, “That’s a good fight for me. Everyone knows that. The UFC knows that. The UFC doesn’t want to give me this guy. And this guy said, ‘Oh, I’ll come to you and [have a grappling match]. Grappling is not our job. UFC is our job.”

In Khamzat Chimaev’s view, Pereira’s willingness to fight others, like Du Plessis when he held gold, but not him, doesn’t add up. Either way, the ripple effect is undeniable. Middleweights now face a champion who sees their division as a checklist. Light heavyweights are staring at an incoming storm. And if Joe Rogan’s “Olympic-caliber wrestler” warning already felt urgent, it just became relevant across two weight classes!