Merab Dvalishvili is pissed off

It’s not that Merab Dvalishvili likes to gripe, but if something’s bothering him, he’s not afraid to let you know about it.

On a Friday in early January, Merab shows up to Syndicate MMA in Las Vegas carrying the same chip on his shoulder he’s been lugging around since his fight with Umar Nurmagomedov was first made. He slips on some MMA gloves, wraps his right calf up to the knee, and climbs into the cage where his bandannaed coach, John Wood, awaits with padded mitts and a body protector.

Wood knows what is coming. Five rounds of unrelenting fury. Merab, whose neck grows out of his body like a banyan trunk, slams shot after shot into Wood, who grunts and adds commentary between rounds for those of us standing and watching, which at the moment is the champ's agent Danny Rubenstein, John’s wife Joanne Wood and myself.

“If Umar doesn’t finish this fight in the first round or two,” the coach wheezes, “he’s f*cked.”

They go back in there and Merab dishes out more of the same, with Wood talking to him, giving pointers, taking the occasional stray off the chops. There he is, wincing at the shots. Taking this abuse as part of a thankless job. And his man — who is built like the pugilists of old, back when guys with chewed up mugs fought from the crouch and shouldered into the target to rip body shots from in close — keeps coming forward.

“We did six rounds on Wednesday,” Wood says, as if astonished that he can hang in there day after day. With this being Friday, it’s a lighter mitt session. “The thing with Merab is, he just doesn’t stop. If a fighter takes it to here” — Wood holds a hand up to this nose — “Merab takes it to here,” and now the other hand to eye level.

At some point, if you’ve followed MMA at all, it feels almost cliche to talk about Merab’s endless cardio. We all know the UFC’s bantamweight champion never tires. Nobody can out-intense Merab, nor — if you judge by the in-fight kiss he gave Sean O’Malley — out-impulse him. You can find the moment in most of his fights where he breaks his opponent with his pressure and pace. O’Malley’s corner comforted him between the fourth and fifth rounds at UFC 306: “We’re almost done with this, buddy.” By that point O’Malley’s body language already told the story. For Henry Cejudo, who rocked Merab with a right hand in the first round, it was the diabolical response throughout the second that did it. Merab was like the killer in the slasher film who would not die. For Petr Yan, it was somewhere midway through the record 49 takedown attempts. Thwarting hostile acts of that kind, set on an endless loop, will leave a man in shambles.

But just look at those names. Marquee names, all of them.

Former champions.

Guys Merab had to fight just to get to his title chance, which he seized at the Sphere by trampling O’Malley and rendering his best, most effective offensive material useless. Throw in Jose Aldo, and it’s a murderer’s row he went through. “If Merab had been defending the title through that run, he would be considered the greatest bantamweight of all time,” Wood says.

And here Merab is, training for a guy who is favored to beat him, even though Nurmagomedov’s greatest conquest to date was Cory Sandhagen. Here Merab is, training through Christmas feasts. Through the New Year’s parties in Vegas. Slamming shots into Wood and his longtime training partner Aljamain Sterling and the dozen or so Georgian/Russian fighters he brought over to help him prepare. Training through the Georgian Christmas, which falls on Jan. 7. Training through his birthday, as he turned 34 on Jan 10. Training through cryptic injuries, which he won’t disclose, just four months removed from winning the title. Training elsewhere when the UFC forbid him entry into the Performance Institute because Nurmagomedov was in there.

See, this is what’s got Merab so ticked off ahead of his first title defense.

But he loves it.

If you ask him, he’ll tell you about it.

“Actually, I'm not surprised, and I’m not disappointed I'm an underdog,” he says after training. “As a fighter, he's good — he’s a good fighter. But now the thing is if he earned it? I know so many good fighters, they deserve it more than him. There is Mario Bautista. He has seven-fight win streak, but because he don't have a [famous] cousin, and nobody pushing him, he doesn’t get it. You know what I'm saying?”

The tape has barely come off his knuckles. Merab has just showered and bid farewell for the day to his training crew, yet he’s still punching at that little target in his mind. Umar Nurmagomedov. What rankles him about Nurmagomedov is the disrespect. The entitlement. The lack of merit. The general atmosphere of Dagestan’s perceived invincibility, and the smugness of Nurmagomedov’s pursuits. It pisses the champion off that he’s stuck in this position, talking about a line-cutter like Umar Nurmagomedov, as an opponent, for a fast-approaching date that he but reluctantly accepted.

He’s peeved all the more when he does the MMA math and it doesn’t add up.

“But Bautista just did beat José Aldo, and … well, when I fought José Aldo, he was coming with three-fight win streak. He beat [Marlon] 'Chito' Vera, he beat Rob Font, and he beat Pedro Munhoz, and then he lost against me, and then he go and he beat [Jonathan Martinez]. Bautista was six-fight win streak when he beat Aldo, and Aldo was still good, still looking good.”

Merab doesn’t love doing interviews like this, because English is his second language. Yet he is fine at getting his points across. In fact, he communicates perfectly. If you’ve seen his social media skits, you know he has a sense of humor. And there’s a passion to what he’s saying, even if he never signed up for being Mario Bautista’s biggest booster. Bautista is merely an example to the larger point, see, which is that the wrong man got booked.

“And then Bautista won [over Aldo], whatever it was, a split decision or something. Bautista beat him. Bautista, we got to give him credit, but nobody really mentioning him anything. So the thing is, when I say Umar don't earn it, he don't even earn it to fight Sandhagen! You know what I'm saying? Because also, I mean, there is so many good fighters.”

I can see it’s a sore subject.

But there is an obvious element to all this. Nurmagomedov is a far tougher fight than the No. 10 ranked Bautista (or anybody else), and he’s the bigger threat to take away Merab’s title. Yet that’s where things get interesting. Merab is training like a madman because he wants to prevent that from happening. In a roundabout way, everything that pisses Merab off could become the very reason he prevails. That chip on his shoulder is well loved. He’s ready to run through a wall.

And that’s what makes UFC 311’s bantamweight title fight on Jan. 18 so novel. Generally speaking, at least in the cases of Khabib, Usman and Umar, if the name Nurmagomedov is getting ready for a fight, it’s a foregone conclusion as to what is going to happen. Whoever is standing on the other side of the cage is about to lose. And not just lose, but get smeshed. That threesome of Nurmagomedovs is a combined 65-0-1 in professional MMA, which is about as beastly as it gets. Throw in lightweight champion Islam Makhachev, Khabib’s protege, and the picture becomes clear.

It’s a camp of juggernauts Merab is dealing with.

Mario Bautista? He feels like a fuzzy blanket by comparison. It’s no wonder Umar gets under his skin.

Yet it’s weird, too, because … well, Merab isn’t just some pushover champion. He is a freaking wrecking ball himself.

Vegas oddsmakers have Nurmagomedov as a 2-to-1 favorite, but there’s a sharp sentiment that Umar is the one heading into the buzzsaw. Merab isn’t like Conor McGregor or Al Iaquinta or Justin Gaethje. He is actually far more like a Nurmagomedov. There’s a reason they call him “The Machine,” and it’s because he has the work ethic of an obsessive. His training partners, whether going back to the days on Long Island with Ray Longo and Matt Serra or in Vegas with Wood and his cast, are witnesses to the greatest pace-pusher in the sport.

“There’s obviously a motor behind that that can push those RPMs,” Wood says.

Where it comes from exactly is anyone’s guess. The champ's upbringing in Tbilisi Georgian SSR, where he wrestled and practiced sambo as a kid? From Long Island, where Longo and Serra helped shape his raw materials into weapons? From harnessing his own resolve? This was a guy who moved to the States at 21 years old to pursue a dream, had to learn English on the fly, worked odd jobs and slugged away in relative obscurity. Is it because he isn’t preoccupied with family, or that he doesn’t even have a girlfriend?

“I quit in 2014, I was 1-2, and I was thinking, does it make sense?” he says. “This goal? Because I wasn't getting paid, and I was actually spending money to fight. I stopped fighting one year and a half, but I was trying to get married. I retired from MMA. So I was thinking to get married, and I wanted to just have a family.”

He laughs thinking back on that.

“It's very hard to meet, you know, like, wifey material.”

Or maybe his drive comes from holding the power to deny those looking past him. After all, Merab was discovered on Dana White’s “Lookin' For a Fight” in 2017 when White and the crew showed up to in New Jersey to see Raufeon Stots. They saw Stots alright, slowly collecting his wits after a spinning backfist knocked him out in 15 seconds.

“Everything is possible, but you have to earn it,” Merab says. He’s actually talking about Umar again. “That's not my problem. So when they give you a push like this, and they help you like this, then you’re still talking sh*t about champion, and I earn it to be here; I don't get gift anything, I just earn it...”

He is funneling his anger. Redirecting it. That’s what he does better than anyone, too.

We’ve seen a little of it against his antagonist, O’Malley. Merab quadrupled “Suga” Sean in strikes, scored six takedowns, and controlled the fight for more than 10 minutes on the ground. He took Yan down 11 freaking times, grinding him to meal. His stats against Aldo require a double take, because nobody dominates Aldo like that, even if Merab never fully succeeded in taking him down. It was 15 minutes of existential hell. If Merab were a football team, he’d be the ’72 Dolphins. In fact, he and Larry Csonka have similar noses.

It’s what makes the fight so fun to the imagination, because it comes down to a very literal dictation of wills.

“So, the thing was, once I win the belt, and I travel a little bit, and I go to my country, [the UFC] asked me when I was coming back,” he says. “I said, ‘Every champion is getting six months time off,’ and that, ‘I would like to do that. Four months? It’s not for me. And I would like to fight in February or March.’ And as soon as I said this, Umar started to disrespect me. ‘Oh, Merab, February fight is now. Surely, I’m not fighting there. And also can’t do it in March, March is Ramadan.’ I had no idea.”

For Dvalishvili, January is a big month to sacrifice. Besides his aforementioned birthday and Georgian Christmas, there’s Epiphany on Jan. 19, which is celebrated by Orthodox Christians. One of the ways devotees celebrate is by submerging themselves in icy cold water. You might remember Merab jumping headfirst into a frozen lake four years ago around this time on the East Coast, only to encounter a shallow bank that busted open his head.

“So now I'm fighting on it whenever he likes, and I’m coming back, like a quick turnaround, even though I was injured, and I’m still dealing with some injuries, and I’m coming, but he’s still trying everything to disrespect me,” he says. “So like, why? Just give me respect, bro. Because I earned it.”

All part of his mental preparation.

The one who knows is his coach, John Wood.

“Nobody’s ever been able to break me,” Wood says. “But we got into it, I think it was a couple of days ago. He hit me with something. He was being mean. He knows how to punch now, so we’re going at it, and I let him go for it. We started to fight. I started going back at him, kicking him, we’re going no shin pads. Then all of a sudden, I’m like, ‘Holy sh*t, I’m tired.’”

If you look around, Merab’s face is all over Syndicate. Posters of previous fights. His cartoon-like signature all over the images. And when he makes you feel like quitting, well, this is what gives Merab’s camp comfort. That he can wear you down, and he will. That he can sap you of your will and break you, and eventually will. Wood calls him a master of “controlled chaos.”

“I think it was in round four, I was like, ‘Oh my God, this is too much.’ I really do think it’s mental and physical, and I don’t know which one is more — maybe 100% mental and 100% heart — but he just doesn't stop. He's just built different. He really is. The drive and cardio. You cannot train for that.”

Merab has the chip. Nurmagomedov has the name.

“It's going to be a nightmare for him,” Wood says of the latter. “Because even if you take Merab down, he's going to make you work. If you try to hold him down, he's going to make you work harder. There's never a settling point for Merab. There's a level of like, hey, if he does this, you still make him pay and work here. So that the next time he does that, he goes, ‘Oh my God, this is terrible.’”

Making life hell is perhaps Merab’s greatest specialty. Even if it’s his own.

“Listen, it doesn't matter what I want, what I feel, respect,” the champ says at the end of my visit. “Whatever [the] company wants, I'm a company man. But I'm grateful. I'm grateful where I am. I'm grateful for UFC, and I'm just happy, and life is beautiful. I’m locked in.”

And the good news is, soon enough Nurmagomedov will be locked in there with him.