Ahead of his middleweight title clash with Dricus du Plessis at UFC 319 in Chicago, Khamzat “Borz” Chimaev explained why he doesn’t believe children should train in mixed martial arts.
Chimaev recently opened a gym for kids in his native Chechnya — notably without an MMA cage.
Asked why during Wednesday’s UFC 319 media day, he made his reasoning clear:
I don’t think so this MMA can be good for the kids because we punching in the face, we broke each other, you know.
So grappling, kickboxing, boxing, all the sports in one sport.
Chimaev does believe that MMA is a great sport, however not for kids – which he believes would be, in this case, categorised as someone who is 15 years of age or less.
And, up until they are older than 15, they should be training other, standalone martial arts, without dabbling into MMA itself:
You know, this is amazing sport but not for the kids.
So I think it should be like at least 15 years to train some different sports.You know, boxing or judo or wrestling, grappling, there a lot of different sports for the young boys.
In other words, in his view, children should first build a foundation in single combat disciplines before transitioning into the all-encompassing demands of mixed martial arts.
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