Merab Dvalishvili: Umar Nurmagomedov ‘bullsh*tting’ injury talk ahead of UFC 311
Merab Dvalishvili doesn’t believe Umar Nurmagomedov’s injury talk one bit ahead of their bantamweight title fight.
Dvalishvili puts his title on the line for the first time against the undefeated Nurmagomedov in the co-main event of UFC 311 on Jan. 18 at Intuit Dome in Los Angeles. In a recent interview with ESPN, Nurmagomedov was asked about an arm injury he revealed in November, but said he still accepted the fight after feeling better “20 days” later. Nurmagomedov also claims he’s been healthy for the training camp, perhaps wisely not putting a target on the injury.
Regardless of what’s real and what isn’t, Dvalishvili isn’t buying what Nurmagomedov is selling.
“He’s bullshitting,” Dvalishvili told MMA Fighting. “He’s a bullshit guy and I’m not buying it. It’s bullshit, you know, his injury. Like he has little injury in his arm and he was... like I had an injury, big injury but I’m not mentioning this. I’m not bringing up this one, you know. Everybody has an injury and every professional fighter has an injury and like, he’s bullshitting.”
“He said he was training, I saw he was punching bags very good when he arrived in Vegas—you can go and see in the video he posted. He was punching bag and if you have any problem with your hand, you won’t be able to punch the bag, and then he was punching bag very normal and I think he’s just mentioning this [to make] some excuse.”
Since winning the belt against Sean O’Malley at UFC 306, Dvalishvili has been vocal that Nurmagomedov hasn’t done enough to earn a bantamweight title opportunity, especially after the road that “The Machine” had to travel to get his crack at UFC gold.
Regardless, he’s giving Nurmagomedov—who defeated Cory Sandhagen in his most recent outing in the main event of UFC Abu Dhabi in August—his title shot, and on Nurmagomedov’s timeline.
“It’s kinda a little bit [of a] quick turnaround for me because, ideally, I wanted to fight in February or March, but [UFC 312] is in Australia, and in March, Umar don’t want the fight [at UFC 313] because of Ramadan,” Dvalishvili said. “Now, I have to fight on my holidays and it’s a little bit [of a] quick turnaround, but I’m all lean and ready to go. ...
“Yeah, Cory Sandhagen fight was good, but my problem was before he wasn’t fighting anybody, the ranked guys. [The] fight before, he [fought] debut guy and because of [the] win against debut guy, he fights No. 2, which for me, it’s not right. It’s a shortcut and it’s cheating. And, yeah, the fight was good. It’s not easy to beat Cory Sandhagen like this, and Umar is a good fighter, but like you have to end it. There is Mario Bautista, has seven-fight win streak and I think Bautista earned it even more [than Umar].”
Dvalishvili plans to be active in 2025. Should he get by Nurmagomedov, he’s eyeing a fight against Petr Yan “in March,” and then he’d like to turn around a month later to face O’Malley in a rematch “in April.”
The first step is to dispatch of Nurmagomedov at the UFC’s first pay-per-view of 2025.
“I’m going to try and finish him,” Dvalishvili said.