UFC Fight Night 217 Preview (Strickland vs. Imavov)
The UFC is back for the first card of 2023 at the Apex in Las Vegas on Saturday, January 14th for UFC Fight Night 217. The main event will be at light heavyweight between #7 (MW) Sean Strickland and #12 (MW) Nassourdine Imavov.
Strickland has stepped in short notice to replace original main event fighter Kelvin Gastelum who was scheduled to fight Imavov at middleweight, but was forced to withdraw with an injury. Strickland headlined the last main event of 2022 and will be trying to rebound from two straight losses, with the last being a razor thin split decision loss to former title challenger Jared Cannonier on December 17th.
While this is a short notice fight, Strickland had plenty to say about Imavov. “I’m not even you going to try to fucking say that name,” Strickland said. “Let’s call him the Frenchie. And if we’ve learned anything about the French – what are the French best at? Giving up. So, I haven’t really watched him fight. I know he likes to bang, he throws big punches, but he’s still fucking French. That’s a hard thing to move past. There’s a lot of history of cowardice to move on from when you’re fucking French.”
Strickland concluded, “So maybe he’s in there to prove a statement. Maybe he’s going to say that his country has fucking finally left the cowardice behind, but I don’t fucking know. Only thing the French are good at is having affairs and giving up and losing fights. But we’ll fucking find out. Maybe he’s different.”
A win would give Strickland a UFC win in his third different weight class, but more importantly a chance to go back on a run at 185 pounds. He has key victories in his career over Jack Hermansson, Uriah Hall and Krzysztof Jotko. A win over Imavov would remind the rest of the top 10 at middleweight that Strickland is not going anywhere any time soon.
Imavov has won three straight and most recently defeated Joaquin Buckley by unanimous decision in September. The 27-year-old also has key victories over Edmen Shahbazyan and Ian Heinisch. He is not impressed by Strickland’s over-the-top trash-talk.
"What can he do that Gastelum [could not]? I think [he has a] big mouth," Imavov said. "I just have to be careful of what he's saying, the words that he's using. The big mouth, that's it."
However, the French fighter has recognized the benefits a win over Strickland will bring to him. “I will have a lot of steps when I win the fight,” Imavov said. “I will be ranked better than if I did fight with Gastelum. So I’m very grateful for that.”
The rest of the main card:
Featherweight - #13 Dan Ige vs. Damon Jackson
Middleweight - Punahele Soriano vs. Roman Kopylov
Women's Bantamweight - #2 Ketlen Vieira vs. #5 Raquel Pennington
Bantamweight - #11 Umar Nurmagomedov vs. Raoni Barcelos
Prelims on ESPN+:
Bantamweight - Javid Basharat vs. Mateus Mendonça
Middleweight - Abdul Razak Alhassan vs. Claudio Ribeiro
Lightweight - Mateusz Rębecki vs. Nick Fiore
Flyweight - Allan Nascimento vs. Carlos Hernandez
Featherweight - Daniel Argueta vs. Nick Aguirre
Flyweight Jimmy Flick vs. Charles Johnson
