UFC bantamweight title challenger Umar Nurmagomedov will finally get to face Merab Dvalishvili at UFC 311 in just a couple of weeks in Inglewood, CA.
Still it hasn’t stopped him from poking at the champion as the fight gets closer. First he mocked Dvalishvili for trying to defend his title against other opponents.
Now Nurmagomedov wonders if the champion will even show up.
“I will not (be) surprised, and nobody (will) be surprised. Even right now I saw commentary or on Twitter they said he will pull out, but he never pulled out before,” Nurmagomedov said during a UFC interview.
“I hope he will not, and the fight is going to happen. I think he just wants to fight with a real guy he can beat. It doesn’t mean I’m really going to 100 percent go inside the cage and smash him, no. He knows other guys, he will beat. With me, it’s going to be hard. That’s why he’s trying to be a champion for a long time, and he wants to fight with O’Malley, with Petr Yan, or someone else because these guys, easy money.”
Insinuating that Sean O’Malley or Petr Yan are “easy money” is a tall statement, but Nurmagomedov put it into perspective. In a way.
“For me, he has to go deep waters. With me it’s going to be a long night. I will not give him takedowns, he will not control me. I have good skills, striking skills, and I can make for him a lot of problems. That’s why, but when we go inside the cage, I will not think he’s scared of me. I will know that this is a man who will try to beat me, I will try to smash him, and it’s going to be a battle.”
Dvalishvili has flopped back and forth on a fight with Nurmagomedov until he agreed to defend his title against him at UFC 311. First he said O’Malley, who he beat for the title at UFC 306, deserved an immediate rematch. Then he said he’d rather face Yan after the Russian took care of business against Deiveson Figueiredo at UFC Macau last last year.
“What I understand is he doesn’t want to take a risky fight. He can beat me, it can happen. It’s not going to break me. I will be same Umar,” Nurmagomedov said.
“Fight is fight. Everybody can lose. If we’re talking about scared, I just think he doesn’t want to take risk, hard fight.”
UFC 311 takes place in Inglewood, CA on Jan 18 at the Intuit Dome.
