Merab Dvalishvili‘s coach John Wood has revealed that he nearly pulled his student from his UFC 311 title fight against Umar Nurmagomedov.
As we know, Merab Dvalishvili is the UFC bantamweight champion. He earned that crown by defeating Sean O’Malley for the strap last year at Noche UFC, and from there, he successfully defended the belt against Umar Nurmagomedov. As it turns out, though, that contest almost never came to be.
Merab Dvalishvili is known as ‘The Machine’ for a reason and he has been able to power through a lot of adversity over the years. In a recent interview, the aforementioned John Wood explained that UFC 311 had a lot of risks involved.
Merab Dvalishvili’s coach makes UFC 311 revelation
“I think that Umar was going to be the toughest fight for Merab at the time,” Dvalishvili’s head coach John Wood told MMA Fighting. “I think we’ll end up fighting him again some time and same thing, we beat them. They asked for the fight and [they came out] ‘Oh I’m injured, I’m this, I’m that.’ Well, Merab was half-dead for that fight.
“You don’t understand, he had an open wound, he had a staph infection, he was on all kinds of antibiotics. I personally, if it was up to me honestly, and I haven’t really told anybody, I probably would have pulled him out of the fight. I honestly would have.”
Quotes via MMA Fighting
Dvalishvili is one of the best bantamweights of all time and that much is obvious – but he wants to try and cement his legacy as the one and only GOAT. Whether or not he can achieve that, of course, will heavily depend on the result of his upcoming rematch against Sean O’Malley. He may have won their first meeting, but you just never know what could happen the second time around.
