Coach Conversation | Khamzat Chimaev vs Sean Strickland

Khamzat Chimaev and Sean Strickland prepare to fight

Respected Striking Coach Sean Madden Stops By To Break Down Saturday’s UFC 328 Middleweight Title Fight

By E. Spencer Kyte • May. 5, 2026

“At the end of the day, fighting is not easy, but it’s simple.”

There is no better way to sum up the dynamics of a fight because stripped down, there are always only a handful of ways things are going to go, but how we arrive at those outcomes is a complicated, layered, nuanced adventure. When you add in the various additional elements that come with a championship fight, the degree of difficulty when it comes to getting your hand raised increases, but in the end, it’s still just two people stepping into the Octagon and laying everything on the line in hopes of achieving the ultimate success.

In an effort to better explain the ins and outs of each UFC championship fight, staff writer E. Spencer Kyte sits down with one of the top coaches in the sport to break down the contest with an eye towards identifying the things each combatant does well, how the fight could play out, and the key factors that stand out as the possible deciding elements in the upcoming title clash.

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For Saturday’s UFC 328 main event between middleweight champ Khamzat Chimaev and challenger Sean Strickland, Kyte tabbed Easton Muay Thai and USA Muay Thai striking coach Sean Madden to help dissect how things may shake out inside the Octagon.

Best Trait of Each Fighter

Kyte: Been a minute since we did one of these together; nice to have you back. What are the best traits of Khamzat Chimaev and Sean Strickland?

Madden: Let’s start with Khamzat — it’s his pace; it has to be because it’s probably the most ferocious on the UFC roster. His average fight time has gone up a little bit now with the Dricus (Du Plessis) fight going five rounds, but it’s not like that fight was competitive. His pace is unbelievable and is something that — I’ve told this before, but when we were out there (Stockholm) in 2022 when Bojan (Velickovic) was training with, I’ve never seen someone work as hard as he works; it was astounding.

I know that led to a lot of sickness and injuries and stuff like that, but I still think it highlights the mentality that he has when it comes to fighting, competition, for wanting to be the best, and that translates to the pace we see in the fight. Add in his ability to dictate where the fight takes place almost the entire time we’ve seen him fight and his ferociousness, and it’s pretty remarkable; we haven’t seen too many like him.

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Kyte: I like that you frame it as his pace because I think it’s similar to the way people get stuck talking about Merab (Dvalishvili). The tendency is to want to say, “It’s his wrestling,” and it’s certainly outstanding — he chains things together really well, he’s half-a-step or a full step ahead of you all the time — but it is the pace. It’s that every time you think you have a chance to breathe, he’s right back on you, and that’s the same as Merab. He didn’t care about getting you down and holding you down — it’s “I’m going to drowned you” and Khamzat is the same way, for the most part. He wants to repeatedly dunk your head in the water and see how long you can take it, and if you can survive and manage on the ground, he’ll just keep doing it.

Madden: What makes this matchup interesting is that controlling the tempo is the essence of fighting. If I like to fight slow and you like to fight fast and you make me fight fast, I’m gonna have a problem with that. If I like to fight fast and you like to fight slow and you make me fight slow, I’m gonna struggle with that; I’m gonna get reckless, I’m gonna get undisciplined. That’s gonna be one of the things I’m paying attention to later — who can control the tempo of this fight?

Khamzat Chimaev Fight Week Interview | UFC 328

That leans towards Khamzat, but we’ve seen Sean be able to slow fights down with the way he fights. I don’t know if he’ll be as successful against someone as Khamzat that has such a break-neck pace, but controlling the tempo is the key to winning fights.

Kyte: We’ll touch on the tempo part later for sure, because Sean has an ability to change those, right? He has moments where he says, “We’re gonna go” and he has moments where it’s as slow as possible and drives you insane.

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Madden: Exactly, and it’s a great trait of his. He has the ability to shift gears, and we haven’t seen that as much in someone like Khamzat, who is 100-percent all the time. We’ve seen that towards the end of some fights he’s struggled (to maintain his effort, output) because of that pace, but for Sean to have the ability to shift gears, go from second to fifth and back down to second, that’s something that comes with the experience he’s had fighting. Obviously, when he wants to turn it on like he did against “Fluffy” (Anthony Hernandez) in his last fight, he has that ability. Something that benefits him greatly are his gas tank and his conditioning. When you know you have a big tank, you know that you can push when you need to push, and he really weaponizes his conditioning when he wants to.

Kyte: And he’s never a guy that goes when it’s not the right time to go. That “Fluffy” fight is a perfect example because he was in third gear the whole way, but as soon as he hurt him, as soon as he saw the opening, he slammed it into fifth and got the finish. I think people forget because he’s had so many of these 25-minute fights where he can stay in that middle gear and beat you that people forget he has that fifth gear when he needs it or can go to it. When he gets you hurt, he can go and he can put you out because he’s so frequently been able to win these “death by a thousand cuts” fights and the narrative around him is that he doesn’t have power and he’s defensively minded and all that stuff. He can go when he needs to, for sure.

Madden: A lot of guys adopt that style because they don’t have the finishing abilities and so it’s special for him that he has it and knows when to access that because most guys have to default to that. That’s a great way to put it.

Kyte: He’ll happily beat you by 1000 cuts, but if he sees you hurt, he’s going.

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Madden: Yeah, he’s turning it up.

Path to Victory

Kyte: The path to victory here seems pretty cut-and-dry here — one guy is aiming to wrestle and get it to the canvas, the other needs to keep it upright and in space for as long as possible. Sound about right?

Sean Strickland Fight Week Interview | UFC 328

Madden: That’s it, man. Khamzat has to test the wrestling early, like he does with everyone. I don’t think he looks — he’s the type of guy that focuses more on himself than his opponent because his strengths are so strong; it has worked against all different styles.

Kyte: He’s so quick on that initial shot.

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Madden: He’s gonna test the wrestling early, he’s gonna see what Sean looks like in those early rounds, and his best opportunity to finish the fight is early. And for Sean, we know that you need to slow this fight down, survive the early rounds — and survive can mean a couple different things. If that’s defending the shots; great. If that’s not getting finished in the first two rounds; great. You know you have the ability to go five hard rounds, and even in the Dricus fight, we saw Khamzat tail off a little towards the end.

There are gonna be opportunities for Sean if we enter that fifth round, but the other side of that too is making sure you keep your mind composed and keep that belief in yourself that you’re able to win this fight even if you’re down four rounds going into that fifth round. When we talk about the Xs and Os here for Sean, he’s gotta throw stuff up the middle, he’s gotta make Khamzat take shots that he’s not ready to take, and I do think this is something that they can exploit with Eric (Nicksick) being his coach and them having trained in the same room together. It’s not the same as fighting, but he’s watched Khamzat, I know they’re gonna break down film really well. Khamzat’s default is to shoot, his default is to wrestle.

Kyte: And he’ll shoot from too far out, he’ll get down on his knees and do all the things you’re not supposed to do.

Khamzat Chimaev of Russia controls Dricus Du Plessis of South Africa on the mat in the UFC middleweight championship fight during the UFC 319 event at the United Center on August 16, 2025 in Chicago, Illinois. (Photo by Cooper Neill/Zuffa LLC)

Madden: Unfortunately, Dricus didn’t have a first line of defense for most of these takedowns, but I trust that Sean is going to have at least a first line of defense, and if he can challenge Khamzat to go to his second and third layers of offensive wrestling, this fight could get interesting.

Kyte: If he can dig that first underhook, if he can get his hips back just a little initially where Khamzat has to work that 10-percent more every time, those are positives.

Madden: You can’t give him the first one in this fight.

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Kyte: It can’t be easy.

Madden: If I was cornering Sean, I would recommend trying to push Khamzat back. As great as his jab is, as good as his footwork is, he does tend to find himself moving backwards towards the fence when he’s operating like that, and the second his foot hits that black line, we know Khamzat is going to be shooting, if he hadn’t already. So that special awareness is crucial. I do like Sean’s knees and his push kicks, and the ability to fake and feint those a little, get Khamzat reacting to those is going to be beneficial. We saw him land the knee in that “Fluffy” fight — it was kind of the beginning of the end in that third round — and I think that’s something they can take advantage of too, but you have to be ready to wrestle off that too because we know someone like Khamzat is gonna try to run through it even if that knee lands flush. Footwork is gonna be a big part of this. Khamzat doesn’t have the best footwork and it’s something they can exploit, but if he’s already got his head in your chest, the footwork is irrelevant, so you have to start early.

UFC 328 Full Fighter Breakdown | Khamzat Chimaev vs Sean Strickland

Kyte: He’s a great wrestler, but he’s not a technical wrestler that is doing everything the fundamentally correct way. He’s athlete-ing his way and strength-ing his way to get to all the spots he wants to get to. We constantly hear about the ungodly strength this guy has and see him just bully people, and if you can force him in some way to have to go to — like you said — second layer, third layer and neutralize some of that strength, your chances increase.

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I think Sean is oddly well suited to test that because he’s a big dude, he’s strong, and Eric is going to have studied the hell out this and game-planned it the same way he did for Sean’s fight with Izzy (Adesanya) where they knew everything that was coming and called it out on the fly.

Madden: That’s exactly right. I have a hard time imagining Eric and Sean not being prepared for every scenario they’re going to find themselves in for this fight, and they will hopefully have an answer for things.

X Factor

Kyte: Okay, so what’s the x-factor here?

Madden: This one is interesting. When we talk about these, we like to try to talk about stuff that is outside of the fight itself. I’m a big believer that training is not fighting, but you can learn a lot from people training together; even small tendencies or cracks in the armor you wouldn’t see on fight night. Even mental things like how they handle themselves on the mat, how they deal with frustrations, are they putting themselves in difficult situations…

Kyte: I’m really interested in Sean talking about “he comes in and picks the guy that he can bully; he doesn’t pick the guys that can give him the hardest rounds,” where Sean is going and training with “Poatan” (Alex Pereira) and pushing himself at all times.

UFC 328 FREE FIGHTS: Chimaev vs Du Plessis | Strickland vs Hernandez

Madden: That says something. Is it important for people’s confidence for fights? For sure, but at this level, you have to be really careful having too many of those rounds and not enough of the tough ones. Things like that give someone like Sean a mental advantage in this fight because he knows the kind of work Khamzat put in when they were in the gym together and he saw who he was working with. There is a layer to this fight — and again, training is not the fight; they are very different, but there are still things you can take from those moments that can be an advantage in the fight, so I’ll be interested to see if that has any application to the fight when they’re in there this weekend.

Kyte: I love that and agree completely. I wanna see if Sean has thrown Khamzat off at all with all of his trash talk and all the poking the bear he’s done. I wanna see if it makes him extra emotional, does it have the Jose Aldo Effect against Conor (McGregor) where he’s talked enough s*** that you’re just so riled up that you stray from your tendencies and you stray from what is naturally you. Aldo started that fight so out of character because he’d spent a year listening to McGregor bad-mouth him and talk trash. Granted, the build to this fight hasn’t been that long, but Sean was talking s*** about Chimaev long before the fight was made.

UFC 328 Countdown | Khamzat Chimaev vs Sean Strickland

Madden: And we’ve seen Khamzat be emotional in fights and we know that’s a double-edged sword, especially when you’re talking about a five-round fight against a guy with a good gas tank, where you’re worried about conserving your energy, managing your gas tank, managing your emotions.

Kyte: Even if you come out and have a good first two rounds, did you over-expend a little and hit that adrenaline dump, start feeling heavy where it’s “Oh s*** — I’ve still got three more rounds and this guy isn’t going anywhere.”

Madden: I will say that he’s improved with that over the fights we’ve seen recently…

Kyte: For sure, and his work with Sam Calavatta and The Treigning Lab is huge for that.

Madden: But this is human emotion and ego we’re dealing with. National pride, a lot of things at stake, and Sean knows how to poke the bear when it comes to a lot of that stuff.

Kyte: Now it’s just on Sean to back it all up, which is always the tricky part.

Madden: That’s it, man.

One Coaching Curiosity

Kyte: What’s are the curiosity points for you in this one?

Madden: For me, it comes down to Sean’s wrestling — I’m really interested to see if he has answers for that first and second layer of offense. If he does, this fight changes quite a bit. I think they do a tremendous amount of wall work at Xtreme (Couture) in their training, so if Sean can utilize the fence for defense and getting back to where he needs to, I think that changes this fight a little bit. It would at least allow him more opportunity to get the fight to where it needs to go. I’m not going to say it favors him or swings the odds necessarily, but it’s gonna present some opportunities.

Kyte: It narrows the gap.

Madden: Exactly. If Khamzat takes you down in the middle — which he does to a lot of people — that makes it a lot tougher. I know people say Sean has good jiu jitsu, but Khamzat’s top game and that pressure are amazing.

Kyte: Sean isn’t a guy that is hitting sweeps and attacking stuff off bottom. His jiu jitsu is that he’s good on top, he can control, he can get to spots if he needs to, but he doesn’t use it and he doesn’t really want to use it; same as his wrestling.

Sean Strickland punches Israel Adesanya of Nigeria in the UFC middleweight championship fight during the UFC 293 event at Qudos Bank Arena on September 10, 2023 in Sydney, Australia. (Photo by Chris Unger/Zuffa LLC)

Madden: The fence is gonna be a key piece of real estate in this fight, and again, I’ll be paying attention to that first and second layer of defense for the wrestling. I’ll also be interested to see — as a striking coach — what his offense looks like and what he’s going to present to Khamzat. Is he going to use his legs in this fight? Is he going to kick a bunch? I would really like to see those knees up the middle, the teep up the middle, and he does a really good job where he’s relatively noncommittal with his hips on the teeps…

Kyte: Yeah, it’s just straight up; he’s not really driving into it.

Madden: He’s flicking and that’s something that’s harder for Khamzat to catch as opposed to teeping hard and giving his hip with it, which is something you don’t want to do against him. And when you’re landing things up the middle, now you can start picking your leg up and faking it, getting reactions…

Kyte: And Sean does that really well naturally where he’ll step forward and lift that front leg just to get a reaction, just to show it to you.

Madden: Exactly, and then you can get the boxing going behind that, so as a striking coach, I’m always going to be paying attention to his shot selection against someone like Khamzat. The goal should be to make Khamzat take shots that he’s not quite prepared for, so I’ll be paying attention to that shot selection for sure. As for Khamzat, I don’t know — is his gas tank going to be all the way good for five rounds here? Is he going to take some risks in this fight? If his takedown gets stuffed, how does that look? To be honest, I think his striking is improving quite a bit. Some of the reads he’s making, some of the offense he’s generating from the open stance is pretty educated and I can see improvements there. If the wrestling gets shut down, I would love to see the adjustments he’s making in the striking department and the evolution of Khamzat on the feet. I don’t know if we’ll get there in this fight, but we’ll see what Sean brings. What do you think?

Khamzat Chimaev of Chechnya punches John Phillips of Wales in their middleweight fight during the UFC Fight Night event inside Flash Forum on UFC Fight Island on July 16, 2020 in Yas Island, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. (Photo by Jeff Bottari/Zuffa LL

Kyte: I’m always going to lean into the mental side of things. What does Khamzat look like if Sean does present good defense, does present good risk management? If we get through two and he’s making him work, making him push, what does that do to his mindset and his approach? Does it make him take a few more risks, as you said, and look to land more on the feet?

And with Sean, he was so dialed in for that “Fluffy” fight, but it comes on the heels of being so checked out against Dricus at UFC 312, so if you get rag-dolled early — Khamzat took Robert Whittaker down in the first 30 seconds and Rob never really got back to his feet or into space; he got up, but Khamzat was on his waist and dragged him right back down and crushed his jaw. If he does something like that to you in the first round, do you check out? We’ll know when he’s in the corner because as much as he walks around, you know when he’s invested and when he’s checked out.

Madden: We’ll see it in his eyes, 100-percent.

Kyte: And this ain’t the dude you want to be checked out against. If you go into another title fight and check out, that’s it; you’re done. You can’t work your way back from that. He’s made this what he was after, he got it, and now he’s got to show up, 100-percent, the whole way through. I don’t think it happens. I think that Dricus fight and the fallout impacted him, but we’ll see. He’s talked all the talk – and he looked terrific against “Fluffy,” it’s the best performance of his career in my opinion — but now you’ve gotta back it up.

Madden: And it’s gonna be hard.

Kyte: And you need to be locked in for 25 minutes, and I know Eric has told him 9,000 times, “You need to wrestle for four or five seconds longer than you think you need to wrestle because he’s just gonna keep coming, every time,” but that’s really hard. For a guy that likes to be out there throwing, can you manage yourself to where you don’t check out? I think Dricus was at the point where he was just beaten, just knew he had zero answers, and it’s interesting to me that we haven’t seen him back yet. Now it’s your turn, Sean.

Madden: Like you said though, this same conversation can apply to Khamzat too if Sean just makes him work — not even win the first two rounds, but just make him work because he’s so use to running people over. Even if he wins them, make him work and see what kind of Khamzat comes out on the third round.

Kyte: And that’s where he needs to still be 100-percent locked in and ready to go.

Madden: We still got a whole three-round fight after this!

Kyte: Yeah, let’s see how you do, because now the pressure is on you. First title fights are always interesting too, right?

Madden: We always see it.

Kyte: As much as he was ordained, it took a lot longer than we thought, but now he’s here and he’s supposed to be the conqueror, now you’re supposed to be the dominant force, but what’s it look like if that guy that has been talking s*** about you stuffs a couple takedowns and really makes you work?

Madden: That’s it, man. That’s when the fight starts. We haven’t seen Khamzat in too many actual fights, but Sean has the ability to put him into a fight, and we will see what comes out when they’re tired, when they’re cut, when they’re hurt.

Kyte: We talk about it all the time — pick the round, depending on the fight: what’s it look like when we get to (insert round here)? We talked about it with Dricus — what’s it look like if he gets it to four and five? Can he have success? Turns out the answer was no, but the same thing applies to Sean and how does it impact Khamzat? We’ll find out after two when he’s sitting on that stool, if it gets there.

Madden: That’s it. That’s why we fight.

Kyte: It’s like your quote that leads this series now — “it’s simple, but it’s not easy.” It’s straightforward what needs to happen here on either side, but can you get it done?

Madden: We’ll find out on Saturday.

Kyte: I can’t wait.

UFC 328: Chimaev vs Strickland took place live from Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey on May 9, 2026. See the final Prelim & Main Card Results, Official Scorecards and Who Won Bonuses - and relive the action on UFC FIGHT PASS!

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