UFC fans have doubted his chances against Khamzat<\/a>, the second-ranked contender Nassourdine believes he should be the challenger, considering his recent victories include an Israel Adesanya stoppage.<\/p>\nDaniel Cormier provides an honest opinion on Nassourdine Imavov earning a Khamzat Chimaev fight after UFC Paris victory<\/p>\n
But his performance, though impressive and controlling, was not the highlight reel finish or damaging bout that the pair promised during the build-up on fight week.<\/p>\n
In the opinion of UFC legend Cormier, the former heavyweight champion was impressed with the performance and did not envy the position in which the French MMA fighter now finds himself.<\/p>\n
During a reaction to the contest on his YouTube channel, the Hall of Famer said: \u201cWhen you\u2019re in the situation that Imavov was in tonight and you get a dominant win like that\u2026 But is it enough?<\/p>\n
\u201cI think today, people will rush to say he\u2019s the number one contender. But I think that because it wasn\u2019t a finish between either\u2026 I think people will want to wait and see because if Fluffy can replicate what he did in the last fight, they\u2019ll go \u2018That\u2019s more impressive, that seems more dangerous to Khamzat Chimaev\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think he did amazing, but I don\u2019t know if it solidified him. And that\u2019s an unfortunate part of mixed martial arts.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hernandez scored an impressive standing choke finish on his opponent, Roman Dolidze, to secure a fight against fellow rising contender de Ridder.<\/p>\n
Daniel Cormier explains the one struggle Caio Borralho had against Nassourdine Imavov<\/p>\n
But the Brazilian, Caio, has lost his spot after struggling to figure out how to be effective against the 29-year-old.<\/p>\n
\u2018The Natural\u2019 could only manage to land 39% of his significant strikes compared to the 50% of Imavov.<\/p>\n
But Cormier pointed to another aspect of the game, which the \u2018Fighting Nerds\u2019 team member failed to exploit.<\/p>\n
He said: \u201cIf you\u2019re Caio Borralho and you watched (Imavov) fight Israel Adesanya, who is an amazing striker and beat him in the way that he did, you would think the only way to go and get a victory is to get takedowns.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe got none. He struggled. He was very rarely able to get close to takedowns. I think he continues to show the evolution of Imavov\u2019s game. He just gets better and better every time we see him inside the Octagon.\u201d<\/p>\n
This loss in France for Borralho concluded his 10-year unbeaten run in MMA.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"UFC legend Daniel Cormier has had his say on whether the dominant win of UFC star Nassourdine Imavov…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":125651,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,38614,797,786,4120,785,80736,85,787,59037],"class_list":{"0":"post-125650","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mma","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-caio-borralho","11":"tag-daniel-cormier","12":"tag-fighting","13":"tag-khamzat-chimaev","14":"tag-mma","15":"tag-nassourdine-imavov","16":"tag-sports","17":"tag-ufc","18":"tag-ufc-paris"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=125650"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125650\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/125651"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Nassourdine](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/GettyImages-2233470216-1024x683.jpg\")
Photo by JULIEN DE ROSA\/AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n