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The profile · researched 1 October 2026
Eleven stoppages, one split decision: Imam Khataev goes back to work in Quebec City
A Chechen-born light-heavyweight who won Olympic bronze in Tokyo, turned professional in Grozny and now fights out of Montréal, Khataev is 12-1 with 11 knockouts and defends his NABF belt against Padraig McCrory on 8 October 2026 — still trying to prove that the stamina problem David Morrell exposed has been fixed.
Kulary to Montréal
Imam Khataev was born on 31 August 1994 in the village of Kulary in the Chechen Republic, and started with the trainer Shamil Batsagov. He fought at the Russian championships in Samara in 2015 and was awarded the title of Master of Sport of international class in 2017. By his own camp's count he had around 300 amateur bouts, among them wins over the Cuban pair Arlen Lopez and Julio César la Cruz — two of the most decorated amateurs of the era.
The Tokyo Olympics, held in 2021, produced the medal he is still introduced by: bronze at light-heavyweight, after a 4-1 semi-final defeat by Britain's Benjamin Whittaker. He added a second bronze at the 2023 World Championships in Tashkent. He is listed at 179cm, short for the division, and fights orthodox out of a low, forward crouch.
He turned professional in 2021 but kept competing as an amateur until 2023, an unusual double life that explains why his professional record is still thin for a man of 32. His base now is Montréal, where he trains under Anton Kadushin and is promoted by Camille Estephan's Eye of the Tiger Management, the Quebec outfit that stages most of his fights.
Ten wins, nine of them short
The professional record reads as a straight line of stoppages. The debut came on 3 November 2021 in Grozny, Ismat Eynullayev gone inside a round. Adam Trenado was knocked out in the first in Lebane, Serbia, in July 2022; Gi Sung Gwak lasted two rounds in Sydney in March 2023; David Benitez and Fernando Galvan were stopped in Montreal in October and November 2023.
On 13 January 2024 in Quebec City he took the vacant North American Boxing Federation light-heavyweight title, stopping Michał Ludwiczak in the second. The belt gave him a reason to keep appearing on Eye of the Tiger shows, and he defended it through 2024: Ričards Bolotņiks, an experienced Latvian, stopped in the sixth in Perth in May; Ezequiel Maderna in the seventh in Montreal in September; Yunior Menendez in the third in Grozny in December.
The only opponent to hear the final bell in that run was Druval Palacios, who took him ten rounds to a unanimous decision in Sydney on 22 March 2025. Ten wins, nine inside the distance, and enough noise around the power that Eddie Hearn was describing him as the future of the 175lb division.
Morrell, and the first loss
The step up came on 12 July 2025 at Louis Armstrong Stadium in Queens, on the Edgar Berlanga–Hamzah Sheeraz card, against David Morrell Jr. Khataev went in at around 4-1 against. With under ten seconds left in the fifth he landed a right hand that put Morrell down for the first time in the Cuban's career; the ropes took part of the fall, Morrell beat the count, and the bell went before anything more could be done.
The second half belonged to Morrell, who stopped trading, boxed, and picked up the pace as Khataev tired. Allen Nace scored it 95-94 and John McKaie 96-93 for Morrell; Tony Lundy had it 95-94 the other way. The split decision was widely argued over, and the fight itself was reported as a genuine war rather than a one-sided schooling.
The reading afterwards was double-edged. The knockdown proved the power carried up to that level; the last four rounds raised the question that has followed him since, which is whether he can sustain pressure for ten rounds against someone who can punch back.
The ban that stopped nothing
Four days before the Morrell fight, on 8 July 2025, the International Testing Agency announced that Khataev had been sanctioned with two years of ineligibility. He had tested positive for clomifene and its metabolites in an out-of-competition control on 9 April 2024 — a hormone and metabolic modulator banned at all times and capable of raising testosterone. The sanction runs from 26 June 2025 to 25 June 2027, his results are disqualified from the date of the test onwards, and it was imposed without a hearing because the violation was not challenged.
The sanction was issued by the ITA on behalf of the International Boxing Association, whose rules govern IBA competition rather than professional boxing in North America. The New York bout went ahead on schedule, and Khataev has fought three times since. Between the test in April 2024 and the announcement he had already boxed four more times, all wins.
Where he stands in October 2026
The rebuild was quick. On 11 December 2025 in Gatineau he put Adam Deines down twice and finished him with a right hand to the body in the third. In January 2026 the stated plan was to be active in the first half of the year and to chase an eliminator rather than soft work; at that point he was ranked sixth by the WBC, seventh by the IBF and fifteenth by the WBO, with the honest assessment in print being that an expected win over Deines had told nobody much about his ceiling.
The answer so far has been emphatic but brief. On 4 June 2026 at the Cabaret du Casino de Montréal, in the co-feature under Albert Ramirez's interim WBA title defence against Lerrone Richards, he defended the NABF belt by stopping Mickael Diallo — a 21-3-2 opponent with 18 knockouts — at 3:00 of the first round. That took him to 12-1 with 11 knockouts.
Padraig McCrory is the next name. The Belfast fighter, 38, is listed by the promoter at 20-2 with 10 knockouts; he won the IBO light-heavyweight title in Frankfurt in October 2022 by stopping Leon Bunn in the sixth, lost for the first time to Berlanga in Orlando in February 2024, and was knocked out in the eighth by Craig Richards at the SSE Arena in Belfast in March 2025.
The 8 October card
The fight sits on an Eye of the Tiger show at the Théâtre Capitole in Quebec City on Thursday 8 October 2026, built as the promoter's biggest to date: eight bouts with nine titles involved. Osleys Iglesias defends the IBF and IBO super-middleweight belts against the unbeaten Oliver Zaren in the main event, with Quebec's Wilkens Mathieu against the Russian Vladimir Shishkin for the NABF super-middleweight title in the co-feature and Leïla Beaudoin making a first defence of her WBA interim super-featherweight title.
Khataev–McCrory is scheduled for ten rounds with the NABF light-heavyweight title at stake. The press conference is on 6 October and the weigh-in on 7 October, both at the Videotron Centre; doors open at 5.30pm with the first bout at 6.30pm. The card streams on Punching Grace in Quebec and on DAZN elsewhere.
The show, now
A Khataev appearance now means a mid-card slot on a Quebec theatre show rather than an arena headline, and it tends not to last long. The 8 October 2026 bill at the Théâtre Capitole in Quebec City runs eight fights with nine titles involved: doors at 5.30pm, first bell at 6.30pm, Osleys Iglesias against Oliver Zaren for the IBF and IBO super-middleweight titles on top, Wilkens Mathieu against Vladimir Shishkin underneath that, and Leïla Beaudoin defending her WBA interim belt, with local prospects from Bas-Saint-Laurent and Trois-Rivières filling the early slots in front of a crowd that is there mainly for the Quebec names. Khataev–McCrory is scheduled for ten rounds with the NABF light-heavyweight title on the line, but his last two outings were over in three rounds and in one — Adam Deines dropped twice and finished with a right to the body in Gatineau on 11 December 2025, Mickael Diallo stopped at 3:00 of the opening round at the Cabaret du Casino de Montréal on 4 June 2026 — so anyone arriving late risks missing him altogether. He fights going forward from a low stance and throws the right hand early; the one time he met a top-ten opponent, against David Morrell in Queens in July 2025, the result was reported as a back-and-forth war in which he scored a fifth-round knockdown and then faded badly over the closing rounds, losing a split decision that plenty thought should have gone his way. That split — brutal while it lasts, questionable past round six — is what both sides of the argument about him are built on. The show streams on Punching Grace in Quebec and on DAZN internationally.
Researched from en.wikipedia.org · ita.sport · boxingnewsonline.net · ringmagazine.com · boxingnews24.com · punchinggrace.com · fightmag.com · fightmag.com