Fast facts
- Division: Middleweight (No. 2 in Knockout Daily’s rankings)
- Record: 17-4 (1 NC)
- Nationality: France (Russian-French, born in Khasavyurt, Dagestan)
- Team/gym: Venum Training Camp, under Nicolas Ott
- Notable wins: Israel Adesanya, Jared Cannonier, Caio Borralho, Brendan Allen, Roman Dolidze
On Oct. 7, Nassourdine Imavov went looking for Sean Strickland in Las Vegas. He started at Strickland’s gym, and when Strickland wasn’t there he recorded a message anyway, as Championship Rounds posted on X: “I’m here in your gym. Sign the contract. Do you need a pen? Or do you need balls?”
Then he drove to the UFC Performance Institute and found him. The clip is short. Imavov asks, “What is your problem? You not sign the contract?” Strickland answers, “Say what?” Imavov keeps going: “Money? I have money, I give. Hey I’m here, where are you going?”
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For a fighter whose public persona has mostly been a jab and a quiet walk back to the corner, it was a strange and revealing week. To understand why a 31-year-old who rarely raises his voice is chasing a man across a city, you have to go back a long way, and you have to remember the one time these two actually fought.
Khasavyurt to Provence to Paris
Imavov was born on March 1, 1995, into an ethnic Kumyk family in Khasavyurt, Dagestan. When he was nine, the family moved to Salon-de-Provence in the south of France, and that’s where he first laced up boxing gloves. A kid from one of the most famous wrestling regions on earth learned to fight with his hands first, in a small Provençal town, and you can still see that order of operations in how he fights today.
MMA came later. At 19 he moved to Paris with his older brother Daguir, and the two of them walked into Fernand Lopez’s MMA Factory. That gym shaped the first decade of his career. At the end of 2023 he left and joined Venum Training Camp to work with Nicolas Ott, a move that lines up almost exactly with the best stretch of results he’s ever had.
He turned pro in 2016 and went 8-2 before the UFC came calling. The last five of those were wins, including the Thunderstrike Fight League welterweight title and a first-round beating of former UFC welterweight Jonathan Meunier at ARES FC 1 in December 2019. Yes, welterweight. The man is 6-foot-3.
The style
Imavov fights from a side-on, bouncy stance and carries his lead hand out long, which shortens the trip his jab has to make. He doesn’t do much kicking to control range. Instead he uses his feet to spring in behind fast punches, mixing feints into one-twos and hook-crosses, and he’s comfortable entering behind the right hand. When opponents shoot, he fights for head position, then peels off with an elbow on the way out. In the clinch his knees are mean.
The part that gets overlooked is that he can wrestle too. He’ll take top position and pin people to the fence when the fight calls for it. The elbows from the crucifix that finished Edmen Shahbazyan in the second round at UFC 268 in November 2021 came from exactly that kind of control.
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The UFC run, and the night he lost to Strickland
He debuted in October 2020 with a decision over Jordan Williams at UFC on ESPN 16. Four months later he dropped a majority decision to Phil Hawes, rallying hard late but running out of time. He bounced back with a second-round TKO of Ian Heinisch, then the Shahbazyan finish, then a decision over Joaquin Buckley in September 2022.
The early UFC years were also full of things he couldn’t control. Visa issues pulled him out of a UFC 273 fight with Kelvin Gastelum, and later out of a UFC 294 matchup with Ikram Aliskerov. When the Gastelum booking was revived for January 14, 2023, Gastelum withdrew with a mouth injury. Strickland stepped in, the fight moved up to light heavyweight, and Imavov lost a unanimous decision.
That result is the only loss on his record since February 2021, and it’s the one he’s now trying to reopen. After it came a no contest with Chris Curtis at UFC 289, ended in the second round when an accidental clash of heads left Curtis with a bad cut over his eye. Nothing settled, nothing gained.
The streak
What followed has been the most convincing run of his life. He took a majority decision over Roman Dolidze in his first UFC main event in February 2024. In June 2024 he stopped Jared Cannonier in the fourth round at UFC on ESPN 57. Three months later he outpointed Brendan Allen.
Then, on Feb. 1, 2025, he headlined UFC Fight Night 250 against former two-time middleweight champion Israel Adesanya and stopped him in the second round. It earned him his first Performance of the Night bonus, which is a little absurd for a man with that many finishes, but bonuses have their own logic. In September 2025 he went five rounds with Caio Borralho in another main event and won a clear unanimous decision. MMA Mania gave him an honorable mention for its 2025 Fighter of the Year.
That’s six straight wins without a loss since he joined Ott, five of them over ranked or former-champion opposition. I’ve complained plenty about contenders anointed after three wins over nobody. Imavov is the opposite case. He did the full climb, and the names on it are real.
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Where he stands now
Knockout Daily’s rankings have him at No. 2 at middleweight. His last fight was the Borralho win, more than a year ago. The inactivity explains a lot about this month.
On Oct. 4, when the Strickland fight didn’t show up on the UFC 335 card for December, Imavov posted a clip with the caption “Playing tough” and a laughing emoji. The same day he raised the stakes, in a statement Championship Rounds shared on X: “If it’s really about money, I’ll put $500K of my own money on the line if you beat me in January. I’m putting this on record.” He added, “If you still don’t take it, then you’re just scared. I’ll handle you outside the cage, fake champ. STRIP HIM.”
Strickland, for his part, wasn’t impressed by the Vegas visit. “Cringe... his training partner knows our schedule because he’s trained with us. But instead chose to go to the PI with the nicest underpaid staff and full security to get content,” he responded. “It was all fake content.” He said the encounter was mildly uncomfortable at most and mocked the four guys with iPhones and security who came along.
Maybe Strickland’s right that it was staged for the cameras. It doesn’t matter much. Imavov spent years losing fights to visa paperwork and head clashes, then won six in a row and still hasn’t been booked in over a year. You can understand a man getting tired of waiting politely.
He has named January. He has put a number on it. What he still doesn’t have is a signature on the contract he brought all the way to Las Vegas.
