The Middleweight division has really heated up in the last few months.
Gone are the days of Marvin Vettori title shots, we have actual contenders now! New champion Khamzat Chimaev has a bevy of options for his next challenger, but the longtime front runner for the next shot has been Nassourdine Imavov vs. Caio Borralho. Both men have been tapped as back up fighters for the Middleweight title bouts in recent, and Imavov in particular has an extremely impressive win streak heading into their UFC Paris main event in just a couple weeks on Sept. 6 in Paris, France.
Imavov is unbeaten in his last four bouts, and each of those wins came against a Top 10 opponent. Even better, he’s scored two knockout wins over Top Five-ranked contenders (at the time) in Israel Adesanya and Jared Cannonier. By any merit-based metric, Imavov is plenty worthy of a title eliminator match up … if not an outright title shot!
“We’ll see how this whole thing plays out, and we’re gonna end up with a Middleweight challenger for Khamzat Chimaev’s title that he just won. These fights have massive implications.”
The unfortunate reality of having two excellent main event collisions between four streaking contenders is that somebody is going to be left on the sidelines, likely to face a Sean Strickland or Dricus Du Plessis despite objectively deserving a chance at the champ. Either in Vancouver or Paris, one of these Middleweights will have to make a serious statement to line up a date with “Borz.”