Ahead of UFC 311, we caught up with Stake Ambassador and UFC bantamweight king, Merab Dvalishvili , as he prepares to defend his crown against unbeaten Umar Nurmagomedov.
Check out what “The Machine” had to say in his exclusive interview with us here at Stake.com and place your bets on the upcoming UFC 311 event with the greatest odds. For more expert tips, read our UFC picks and predictions and get all the details on the entire UFC fight card .
Ahead of your first bantamweight title defence in the Intuit Dome in Los Angeles , how's camp going? Especially with it being in January, a time you may not have looked at fighting ideally. How are you feeling?
Right now, I feel great. Yeah, it's one week left until my title defense and, I’m ready to go, no excuses. Like you said, I was ready to come back after five or six months, like every champion does. They often take even more time.
When I said I was going to fight in February or March, Umar started to complain and blame me and disrespect me. When I said I will fight in February or March, he said a February fight was in Australia and March was Ramadan, which I had no idea about.
At the end of the day I'm a champion. Dana and the UFC asked so I said ‘Okay, I will step up’. I love the UFC so it is not a problem. Even though I wasn't training because I had an injury, but I signed the contract and now we are locked in and people are excited for this fight!
So this is the thing that has been fascinating to me is you've said this now in a couple of interviews where you said no excuses, but also you were dealing with an injury. What is the status of the injury now? What is it that was injured? What was needed to work on it? Are you all right and good to go?
Yeah I'm good now. I will post the injury or whatever after the fight, but before I don't want to show and make people panic. The injury was serious, it was not a joke. I have taken a fight on. Training was serious and I was dealing with a few knocks, but thank God now I'm okay and ready to go!
Dana has said that there's no backup fighter, right? So if one of you pull out, that would be the fight off. Obviously you're both going to fight, but Umar is also talking a bit about how he supposedly has this injury. Do you think he's making excuses in advance?
Of course he is making excuses, as you guys saw he was training with Henry Cejudo like he was holding gloves to Henry and was punching, and then I saw he was sparring with tough guys and I have heard him say that he was totally fine and that he had little injury a couple of months ago…it is just him making excuses..
Why do you think he's making these excuses? Do you think that he's kind of beginning to understand that this is probably the toughest fight of his life?
He’s actually cocky. That's his problem. He thinks that he got this one easy, but he never faced me. And believe me he will know on the night. He will realize that he's going to fight me and he will be humble.
Why is it so bitter between you guys?
I have never said that he's not a good fighter. I say he's a good fighter, but he takes shortcuts, you know. He cheated a little bit because he was fighting nobodies and guys on their debut. And then from debut guy, he fought number two, you know, that's, that's a gift and that's a shortcut. And that's not how you want to earn your title fight.
That's not right. In my opinion, he was supposed to fight one more. Maybe against Song Yadong. But once the UFC asked me, I said, okay, I will fight him. But I wanted to fight in February or March. But that's what I said. Why don’t I like him? Because he called me a fake champion.
Also, he was disrespectful towards my country.
He said he wants you to bring proof of that to the press conference. Are you going to do that?
Bro, I posted on my Instagram. Go watch what he did. He did so many things. Go on his Twitter. He deleted many, but you are still going to see it. He was disrespectful to me.
MMA media have short memories. Did you see the video when I asked him why you are disrespecting me, right? He said, because I wanted to, what are you gonna do about it? 30 minutes later, he lied in front of everybody. He said I never disrespected. I never disrespected your country. But then I posted pictures and videos and you guys can see.
Umar posted a picture with that provocative guy in the restaurant and he even promoted him. That's not sportsmanship and that's not what a real man would do.
You should never disrespect professional fighters, especially in the arena when I was cornering Aljamain Stirling and I was walking away, I wasn't doing anything, man!
You know, as a fighter he's a good fighter, but as a man he's not a man.
Do you hate him more than you hated Sean O'Malley?
I don't hate Sean O'Malley, man. I don't hate anybody. I just want people to be humble and respectful. I don't deserve to be called a fake champion. I don't deserve to be disrespected because I am not everything. Nobody gives me nothing. I'm going to prove it again.
Cejudo just announced his fight against Song Yadong? You think he's going to win in his comeback?
I hope so. I am always rooting for guys that I fought. Win or lose,I always root for those guys. Even Cejudo is rooting for Umar, as he's training with Umar and stuff like that. But yeah, I hope Cejudo will win.
Song Yadong is a good fighter. Of course Umar realised that and he didn’t want to fight against him because he may get knocked down, that's why. The more you fight, the more chances that you're going to lose. So why, if you can take a shortcut and fight straight for the belt and especially if you are thinking Merab is willing to come back quicker after injury, you know, why not? That’s how he thinks.
Well, he was too injured to fight Yadong, but he's not too injured to fight you, right ?
Oh, yes, of course.
Has Ilia Topuria got back to you since you did that interview where you said he might be in your corner?
Yeah, when I did the interview, that was like one month ago. And after that, my focus was completely on training. I text Ilia but he is so busy and he has so many businesses going on in Spain and he is the man at the moment, and I know how busy he was so I don't even ask him. Either way, with him in my corner or not, I am going to win.
What was the crazier moment, going back to Georgia or hearing the reaction in the Sphere when you won the belt?
So, when I won the belt, that was like one minute, and it was crazy and I was the happiest guy. But that was like one minute experience, but in Georgia.
First of all, it always feels good when you go home. And once I stepped from the plane, the police officers and the airport workers and all the people were so happy and taking pictures and they were waiting for me. There were so many people. Even in the taxi to the city, all the cars were stopping and everybody was waving their hands. People in all the buildings and out on the street, they were all so happy. So I will have to say that going back to Georgia with my belt was the craziest experience.
There was a video that came out today that showed Sean's corner for your last fight where they were shouting at you, giving you instructions. When that video came out, did you feel kind of vindicated when you saw that? Did it make you think ‘yeah, they should have probably stopped the fight and given them the warning at the time’?
No, it's already passed, you know, they were trying to make something work. They tried to do shortcuts and now everybody must realise don't do this. Just work, man. Just try to beat me properly, don't do this dirty stuff, don't do it. This is bullshit, man. This is not how you want to win the belt, to distract me, disrespect me. I'm a real guy. You talk to me, you give me love, I give you love. You give me hate, I'm gonna slap your ass, you know?
You mentioned slapping ass. Are you gonna kiss him maybe? Because you kissed Sean O'Malley during the last fight. Sean's a bit better looking, right?
No, no, no. No kissing for Umar, just punches.
Umar mentioned his fractured arm. First of all, do you believe this? And second of all, has this changed your approach to the fight at all?
No, first of all, I don't believe that because Umar was continuing to train. He never stopped training like he said in an interview. He was running and wrestling. He said he's fine. He is no problem. He's just mentioning these injuries, everyone deals with injuries! I have many but I am not talking about them.
Sean O'Malley recently announced that he was quitting social media to become a champion again. What are your thoughts on this?
I mean, that's up to him, but it's very hard to quit social media, man. You want to connect with your followers, and give them the love back, you know.
He lost and maybe he is getting a lot of hate and I understand that, but today we live in reality we need social media we need to connect with our followers.
I don't know how he will do it, but that's his choice. If he is able to do it, good luck with that.
If you beat Umar on the weekend, do you welcome a rematch with Sean? Is that in your plan?
Yes, no problem. I think the UFC wants a rematch and I have no problem with that. You know, I will fight anybody. Whoever the UFC wants me to fight. I never make the decision on who I fight but whoever the UFC asks me to face, I always say yes. For example, I am fighting Umar Nurmagomedov now. He doesn't deserve it yet, he was supposed to fight one more but I will always respect this and I always do what my company wants to do.
Obviously both yourself and Ilia Topuria have Georgian background. Are there more Georgian fighters to come?
Yeah, for sure. There are more Georgian guys coming and soon we will see them signed to UFC. But it is hard to become a UFC champion, there are so many contenders and different factors.
I thought I deserved a chance after the Jose Aldo win, but I had to fight contenders like Yan and Cejudo and take a long road.
We show that the Georgians are tough fighters and good fighters. Of course, with more fighters coming, I believe and I hope that more Georgian guys can win the UFC belt.
Looking into the future, do you have a dream opponent that you would like to face?
My dream is to fight the best of the best. So maybe it will be another former champion. In my career I have always fought the best and I want to keep doing that.