For those who are used to a Dubai winter, nonetheless, who have never been to Sweden, I will boldly claim that you do not know what ‘cold’ means. I am Swedish, and I can tell you: it’s cold. Like, really cold. Someone else who has found the cold unbearable is Stockholm’s Khamzat Chimaev, who has bid a momentary farewell to his Scandinavian homeland and will now be representing (and fighting out of) the UAE at this weekend’s UFC 294 event, and for the foreseeable future.
“Why have you moved from Sweden to Dubai?” I asked Khamzat in Swedish at the official UFC 294 press conference. “Is it because of the people?”
He laughed.
“I moved to Dubai because the training facilities are great, but also because I just can’t survive in nine months of darkness. I need sun. Warmth. Stockholm is always home, but I get seasonal depression every single year. Dubai is my town for now.”
Khamzat has flown out his whole team from Stockholm’s Allstars Training Center and has set up shop at Abu Dhabi’s UAEJJ Fitness, among other gyms, where he’s been torturing punching bags and wrestling mats for the last few months in preparation for, unarguably, the toughest test of his career, former Welterweight Champion, Kamaru Usman.
Having emigrated as a teenager with his mother from the glacial terrain of Chechnya to the no less-cold Sweden, it will be interesting to see how the change in climate impacts the blitzing athlete tonight at the Etihad Arena in Abu Dhabi.
But in an uploaded video from his personal YouTube account entitled Dubai Vlog #1, Khamzat’s intimidating voice can be heard saying, “Come to Dubai, Habibi. The wolf pack is here.”
All I can say is, thank goodness I’m not fighting him.
