Nassourdine Imavov vs. Chris Curtis set for UFC 289
A middleweight fight between Nassourdine Imavov and Chris Curtis will be going down in June.
According to MMAFighitng, Imavov and Curtis have verbally agreed to fight one another at UFC 289 on June 10 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada with contracts expected to be issued shortly. This is also a fight that was supposed to happen at Ares FC 2 in October 2020 but the event was canceled.
Nassourdine Imavov (12-4) is coming off a main event decision loss to Sean Strickland in January in a scrap that was at light heavyweight due to Strickland taking it on short notice. Prior to that, Imavov was on a three-fight win streak with a decision win over Joaquin Buckley, a TKO win over Edmen Shahbazyan, and a TKO victory over Ian Heinisch.
Imavov is currently ranked 12th at middleweight and is 4-2 in the UFC with his other loss coming by majority decision to Phil Hawes. In his UFC debut, he picked up a decision win over Jordan Williams.
Chris Curtis (30-10) suffered a close decision loss to Kelvin Gastelum back at UFC 287 – in a fight he appealed due to the ref missing a head butt which he felt swayed the second round, and the fight. Before the setback to Gastelum, Curtis knocked out Buckley to return to the win column after losing a decision to Jack Hermansson – in a scrap he took on short notice.
Curtis is 4-2 in the UFC as he knocked out Phil Hawes and Brendan Allen to start his UFC tenure and then beat Rodolfo Vieira by decision. He is also currently ranked 15th at middleweight.
With the addition of Imavov vs. Curtis, UFC 289 is as follows:
- Amanda Nunes vs. Julianna Pena
- Stephen Thompson vs. Michel Pereira
- Nassourdine Imavov vs. Chris Curtis
- Dan Ige vs. Nate Landwehr
- Jasmine Jasudavicius vs. Miranda Maverick
- Eryk Anders vs. Marc-Andre Barriault
- Diana Belbita vs. Maria Oliveira
- Blake Bilder vs. Kyle Nelson
- Matt Schnell vs. David Dvorak
- Hakeem Dawodu vs. Lucas Almeida
- Aimeann Zahabi vs. Aoriqileng
