LOS ANGELES – Dressed in an all-burgundy suit with a matching vest underneath, bantamweight champion Merab Dvalishvili walked into a hotel ballroom for UFC 311 media day with unusual low energy, and that’s probably because he had a lot on his mind.
For starters, Dvalishvili, who claimed the 135-pound title this past September with a dominant win over Sean O’Malley, preferred a six-month turnaround as opposed to making his first title defense four months later. There’s also an injury he’s been dealing with, the details of which he wouldn’t divulge, but he made it clear “training was difficult” because of it.
At the top of the list, though, is the budding feud with Umar Nurmagomedov, which they will settle Saturday as Dvalishvili puts his belt on the line in the UFC 311 (pay-per-view, ESPNews/Disney+, ESPN+) co-main event at Intuit Dome. Things got heated between the two men at a press conference in early December, which seemingly has bothered Dvalishvili ever since given he and Nurmagomedov were on good terms before then.
