Merab Dvalishvili appears to make the second defense of his bantamweight title when he faces Sean O’Malley in a rematch at UFC 316, but it turns out he has barely reached his first defense in January.
Following a dominant performance on Best O’Malley, Dvalishvili, who won the title this September, made a quick turnaround to compete again at UFC 311. At his absolute best, Dvalishvili had a difficult job at hand considering the Nurmagomedov pedigree and grappling background.
Despite taking part in the battle as the underdog, Dvalishvili pulled away from one of his biggest victories to date when he thwarted an attempt to become the champion of Nurmagomedov.
“I think Umar will be the toughest fight for Merab at the time,” Dovalishvili head coach John Wood told MMA Fighting. “I think we’ll be fighting him again and the same thing. We beat them. Well, Merab was half-dead for that fight.
“You don’t understand, he had an open wound, he had a staphylococcal infection, he was taking all sorts of antibiotics. I personally, it was up to me honestly and I really had no one to say, I would probably have pulled him out of the fight. I had honestly.”
That revelation places Dvalishvili’s performance under the brighter spotlight, considering he ultimately defeated Nurmagomedov and found a way to take over in the later rounds.
Conditioning and ability to push the pace for 25 minutes in a row have always been one of Dvalishvili’s biggest weapons, but his coach is no surprise to see Bantamweight champions, especially being treated for STAPH infection.
Research shows that antibiotics are “badly confused” with athletic ability, but Wood admits he is unsure of Dvalisvili’s determination to move forward to get the battle with Nurmagomedov on schedule.
“It was such a bad thing, but it was the guy who barely managed to walk, but he spars 10 rounds and looks phenomenal,” Wood said. “So I knew he could do that. So I knew in the room we were going to win this fight, but behind my head, I was like Jesus, he’s been so banged.”
He was undoubtedly not in his best condition in terms of his health, but Dvalishvili still performed vintage and achieved a unanimous decision victory.
Nurmagomedov then suffered his own injury – especially the horrifying broken hands that took place in the first round of the battle.
Just as sympathizing with the fighter jets where the wood deals with injuries, he cannot feel so bad for Nurmagomedov, knowing the difficulties that Dvalishvili faces in the lead-up of that fight.
“Umar is the fact that ‘Oh, I have a busted hand.’ You guys wanted a fight,” Wood said. “We wanted to fight later. We said we would fight you. You wanted to take a break for Ramadan.
“Then it’s ‘We have this (injury), we have it.’ Either way, it’s the same thing.
A similar situation happened to Dvalisvili after he defeated O’Malley to win the title this September. And the ever-colored former champion revealed that he handles hip injuries that prevent him from doing a lot of grappling during training camp.
O’Malley underwent surgery to repair the injury and when he faced his second Dvalishvili on June 7th, he promised a very different performance.
Regardless of the outcome, Wood promises that Dvalishvili will not offer any kind of excuse as to why he won or lost the fight, and does not expect it to change after the rematch with O’Malley.
“If Merab loses that belt, I wouldn’t hear any excuses from him,” Wood said. “I can’t hear anything they come up with, like, ‘Oh, my legs were falling down, it was raining outside.’ Umar was a tough battle. There was no doubt in my heart. Merab was to win the battle.
“That’s why this fight is kind of intriguing because Sean knows it now. Tim (Welch) knows it feels that. They feel it.
Wood knows that dvailishvili will never be out of the fight, be hit, sick or injured, and if the UFC allows him to do that, he will be the most active champion on the entire roster.
“He loves to fight,” Wood said. “He would like to fight three more times after this if he could.