{"id":84419,"date":"2025-08-21T07:35:07","date_gmt":"2025-08-21T07:35:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/84419\/"},"modified":"2025-08-21T07:35:07","modified_gmt":"2025-08-21T07:35:07","slug":"dana-white-refuses-to-commit-to-imavov-title-shot-even-with-ufc-paris-win","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/84419\/","title":{"rendered":"Dana White refuses to commit to Imavov title shot even with UFC Paris win"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">The Middleweight division has really heated up in the last few months.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">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 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mmamania.com\/2025\/7\/29\/24476419\/khamzat-gets-sick-caio-borralho-nassourdine-imavov-bicker-over-ufc-319-back-up-slot-espn-mma\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">tapped as back up fighters<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Imavov is unbeaten in his last four bouts, and each of those wins came against a Top 10 opponent. Even better, he\u2019s scored <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mmamania.com\/2025\/2\/1\/24356699\/video-highlights-ufc-saudi-arabia-results-espn-imavov-knockout-adesanya\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">two knockout wins over Top Five-ranked contenders<\/a> (at the time) in Israel Adesanya and Jared Cannonier. By any merit-based metric, Imavov is plenty worthy of a title eliminator match up \u2026 if not an outright title shot!<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">\u201cWe\u2019ll see how this whole thing plays out, and we\u2019re gonna end up with a Middleweight challenger for Khamzat Chimaev\u2019s title that he just won. These fights have massive implications.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">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 \u201cBorz.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Middleweight division has really heated up in the last few months. Gone are the days of Marvin&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":84420,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,40762,785,85,1396],"class_list":{"0":"post-84419","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-fighting","11":"tag-latest-ufc-mma-news","12":"tag-mma","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-ufc-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84419","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=84419"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84419\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/84420"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}