The first Ultimate Fighting Championship event of 2023 has
undergone a late change to its headliner.
Advertisement
According to promotion broadcast partner
ESPN, Kelvin
Gastelum has been forced to withdraw from his
UFC fight Night 217 showdown against Nassourdine
Imavov due to a mouth injury, and as a result, will be replaced
by Sean
Strickland on less than one week’s notice. Strickland will be
headlining back-to-back UFC cards after dropping a unanimous
decision to Jared
Cannonier in the promotion’s last event of 2022 on Dec. 17.
While both men typically compete at 185 pounds, Strickland vs.
Imavov will be contested at 205 pounds but will remain a five-round
bout.
UFC Fight Night 217 takes place on Saturday at the UFC Apex in Las
Vegas. It’s the second significant blow for the card, as a proposed
co-main event clash between Geoff Neal
and Shavkat
Rakhmonov was scrapped due to a Neal injury. That bout has
since been rescheduled for UFC 285.
After authoring a six-bout Octagon winning streak from October 2018
to February 2022, Strickland has dropped back-to-back contests
against Alex
Pereira and Cannonier. The former King of the Cage title holder
is 12-5 in UFC competition overall and owns notable victories
against the likes of Jack
Hermansson, Uriah Hall,
Brendan
Allen, Court McGee
and Tom
Breese.
Imavov, meanwhile, has emerged as an intriguing prospect at
middleweight after winning four of his first five promotional
appearances. In his lone appearance of 2022, the Paris native
outpointed Joaquin
Buckley at UFC Fight Night 209 this past September.