Sean and Khamzat just talked right past him while he sat on his tongue and watched from the cuck chair in the corner. Imavov should have been demanding his title shot last year as soon as Sean lost the second fight to Dricus.
Oh no, Imavov is fine being in the cuck chair, he even bought snacks and soft drinks. The guys knows he gets only one shot at the belt.
Imavov may not be a leg humper, but he looks like one (he is Dagestani), and he isn't liked by the fans, because not only he has the charisma of a brick, he is a serial eye poker, and a rather egregious one, if he is losing any momentum in the fight, he just shoves his fingers down the sockets. No one wants to see this guy with the belt.
And if Imavov loses, he knows he is going waaaay back in the line, and he ain't winning shit with Khamzat around. So he will stay quiet in the cuck chair, Chimaev said he will move up after a title defence because he wants the double champ, and once he is gone, Imavov will speak again about getting the shot.
People love to retort with DPP picking Sean up and dunking him, but Dricus is a thickly built Middleweight and the most entropic (or situationally reactive) fighter in history, and Strickland does scramble a lot when taken down.
This all comes down to whether Sean can ragebait Khamzat/make him work too much per round.
If I had to guess, Khamzat will get rage baited to stand and fight. Masvidal has been shit talking him non-stop.
If you know anything about Khamzat is that he has a huge ego and is a notorious gym bully, that he goes extra hard even on simple drilling exercices to show how good he is.
There was this video of him sparring with Roundtree, uploaded by Chimaev's crew to show that Khamzat can bang, and he is most definitely NOT a crouch sniffer.
Aside of the retardation of going this hard on sparing without any equipment is dumb, a couple of seconds of a spar match doesn't tell us anything, but it is clear that the croutch sniffin' jokes are getting to Khamzat, and while I don't like to say "psychological warfare" to dumb mma trash talk, I think Strickland and his team will push hard on this button to get Khamzat upset.
Even on the DDP fight Chimaev was getting upset by the boos of the crowd. So, with one minute left in the fight and the belt already in the bag, he decided to stand and trade with DDP:
Only to get tagged with a straight, after that Chimaev said "fuck that", threw a flicker jab and immediately dove into DDP's balls.
So my guess is, Khamzat will try to strike with Strickland on R1 just to show he can do it, and he will find out that without any proper footwork and head movement, his face will just be a piñata for Sean's jabs. He might even go for 2 rounds, but eventually he will go for the TDs and then we will see if Strickland's has that great of a TD defense that people say.
I would say the odds are still 8-2 for Chimaev, easily, but there is something about Khamzat that doesn't pass the smell test to me. One trick ponies, no matter how great the pony is have this tendency of getting checked when you least expect, just ask Mark Coleman.
