Merab Dvalishvili Says Injury Impacted Training, but Won’t Effect UFC 311 Title Fight

Los Angeles — Facing Umar Nurmagomedov in the co-main event at UFC 311, bantamweight champ Merab Dvalishvili is fighting a little sooner than he’d hoped.

“Originally I wanted to come back in March, after six months, especially after winning my title fight first time, and I wanted to enjoy it,” the Georgian admitted on Wednesday, speaking with media outlets including Cageside Press.

There’s another reason for Merab wanting time off, and it has little to do with the chatter online suggesting he wanted to avoid facing Nurmagomedov. Dvalishvili (18-4) revealed that he was dealing with injury, “but once I hear the UFC needs me, I stepped up. Dana [White] said yes, I go to [the UFC] office and I said ‘okay, I will step up, I’m a company man, let’s do it.’

While the undisclosed injury Merab mentioned won’t impact the fight, he admits it did effect his training. “Training was difficult because of this injury, but I’m good, I’m ready now. I’m ready now, I’m so good.”

There has been a lot of drama between Dvalishvili and Umar Nurmagomedov in the build-up to UFC 311. The champ feels Nurmagomedov skipped the line, and has shown him disrespect. Umar has said in response that Davlishvili needs a reason to hate him.

“That’s another thing that’s not true. I don’t need to hate nobody,” Dvalishvili stated on Wednesday. “You guys know, I was kissing Sean O’Malley, I had so much fun inside the octagon. I was smiling there. I don’t need to hate nobody, I don’t hate nobody. It was things that Umar [said that] disrespect me. He called me ‘fake champion,’ I’m not a fake champion. He brought up some disrespectful expression, and he says it’s a Georgian expression, it’s not a Georgian expression. He mentioned my country. And he still continues to disrespect me. This is not right, especially from him because I know him.”

“Every time I’d seen him, I gave him my respect, I was cool with him, and I know him as a person. This is not like social media, this is not like a video game or something where you guys are talking trash. We are real people. To get disrespect from Umar, I was mad. When I met him in person, I said ‘why did you disrespect me in Twitter?’ and he said ‘because I wanted [to], what are you going to do about it?'”

Then, according to the champ, 30 minutes later (and in a scene caught on camera late last year), Nurmagomedov denied being disrespectful. “That’s why I was so mad and I wanted to kill this guy, because I’m a real guy. I’m not going to ignore this. And that was it. But now it’s all good, we have fight week, I’m positive. I just saw him, and I ignored him. Now we have this fight on contract, and it’s going to be a good fight. I’m sure you guys will love this fight, you guys will have a good show.”

Watch the UFC 311 media day appearance by bantamweight champion Merab Dvalishvili above.