UFC 268 – Edmen Shahbazyan vs. Nassourdine Imavov – Fight Predictions & Analysis

Twenty-three-year-old “golden boy” will use another chance to reign his hype back against French fighter Imavov.

There was lots of hype around Edmen Shahbazyan, who was undefeated in 2019 with the record 11-0. He was only 21 years old, and everyone predicted a bright future for him and had already planned his battle with Israel Adesanya because of his amazing striking skills. Still, Blonde Brunson stopped the hype train around him and served his first-ever loss. After that, another grappling specialist, Jack Hermansson defeated him via unanimous decision. Before suffering these losses, he earned 4 victories in the UFC and 1 in DWCS. He defeated Brad Tavares via KO in the first round, Jack Marshman via submission, and Charles Byrd via KO, all of them in a very first round.

French fighter will hold the 4th fight in the UFC. His UFC record is 2-1, and he fought 2 of his fights in the following year. He is training in an MMA factory in France, which is the gym of Ciryl Gane, the new interim heavyweight champion. In his debut, he defeated Jordan Williams but suffered a loss against Phil Hawes. However, his last appearance ended up with his TKO victory. 26 years old French fighter has a good submissions game, but will it be enough to defeat Edmen?

From my point of view, Edmen will earn the victory in this bout. He was defeated by top-level guys like Brunson and Jack Hermansson, who have one of the best grappling skills in the division. I don’t think that French fighters will do the same as they did to Edmen.

The odds are very close to each other. The victory of both fighters has an odd around 1.9, which is logical. There is a question, can Edmen handle the grapplers or not? I think that he can, and suffering a loss against top contenders at the age of 21-22 does not make you a bad fighter. 22-23 is the age when hard training of 6 months can be very effective for takedown defense or anything else. I think he used this break to improve, and now he will be back in the winning column, so 1.9 is great odd for him.