Newly-crowned bantamweight champion Merab Dvalishvili tried his damndest to avoid a fight with top contender Umar Nurmagomedov, campaigning to rematch Sean O’Malley and then offering to battle this former flyweight titleholder before begrudgingly accepting the UFC 311 co-main event on Jan. 18 in Los Angeles.
But that doesn’t mean “The Machine” will be working on fight night.
“I will not (be) surprised, and nobody will (be) surprised,” Nurmagomedov told UFC (transcribed by Sherdog). “Even right now I saw commentary or on Twitter they said he will pull out, but he never pulled out before. 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.”
The 28 year-old Nurmagomedov improved to 18-0 by defeating Cory Sandhagen atop the UFC Abu Dhabi fight card last August. As for Dvalishvili, 33, he bumped his record to 18-4 — and captured the 135-pound crown — with a dominant performance over the aforementioned O’Malley at UFC 306 inside Sphere last fall.
“Me, no. 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,” Nurmagomedov continued. “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. 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. Fight is fight. Everybody can lose. If we’re talking about scared, I just think he doesn’t want to take risk, hard fight.”
For the rest of the UFC 311 fight card and PPV lineup click here.
