Whatever happens in Abu Dhabi this Saturday night, Kamaru Usman’s position as one of the sport’s best-ever welterweight fighters.

But this weekend, the former longtime 170-pound champion takes on a different type of challenge, and in a different weight class, when he fights Khamzat Chimaev on just over a week’s notice, where he will attempt to overcome two consecutive losses to Leon Edwards, while also handing the unbeaten Chimaev the first blemish on his resume.

Whether or not that will happen remains to be seen Saturday’s fight is, on paper anyway, by far the toughest test of Chimaev’s career given what Usman was able to do to the vast majority of his welterweight rivals throughout throughout an undefeated run which stretched between 2013 to his first rematch with Edwards in 2021.

Two of those were wins over arch-rival Colby Covington, the second of which you can see below.

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