Merab Dvalishvili issues an ice-cold preview of potential Umar Nurmagomedov rematch: "I’ll break him in the first 1.5 minutes"

Merab Dvalishvili recently shared his thoughts on a potential Umar Nurmagomedov rematch and made a bold prediction. Dvalishvili expressed his confidence about beating Nurmagomedov dominantly again.

Dvalishvili went up against Nurmagomedov in a bantamweight title fight at UFC 311 in January and outpointed the Dagestan-born fighter over five rounds to win the bout via unanimous decision. Both fighters expressed being open to a rematch in the aftermath, with many expecting it to go down next year.

Ahead of Dvalishvili's upcoming title fight against Cory Sandhagen at UFC 320 this weekend, he shared his honest thoughts on another potential Nurmagomedov fight and said:

"If I have to fight Umar Nurmagomedov next, I'm confident I'll break him this time and beat him clean. Our last fight wasn't like that. I was controlling things and won without taking unnecessary risks or headaches, but I won't let him off so easily in the octagon next time... I'll break him in the first 1.5 minutes and then drag him around the octagon for the remaining 23.5 minutes like a sack... Even after losing, he didn't learn his lesson."

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Merab Dvalishvili says Mario Bautista is "more deserving" of a title shot than Umar Nurmagomedov

Merab Dvalishvili recently claimed that Mario Bautista was more deserving of a UFC bantamweight title shot than Umar Nurmagomedov. Nurmagomedov is set to face Bautista at UFC 321, with the winner likely getting the next bantamweight title shot.

In a recent interview with MMA Junkie, Dvalishvili backed Bautista to beat Nurmagomedov and said:

"Yeah, I hope Bautista whoops Umar's a** and I will fight Bautista next, because Bautista is a good fighter, you know. He has got a good winning streak, beat a lot of good guys, and he is a more deserving guy too. Bautista's cousin's name is not Khabib. That's why he needs a nine-fight win streak to maybe fight for the belt. Some people can get the belt after a six-fight win streak [by] fighting nobodies, you know, without ranked opponents. So Bautista could be next."

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