Though the reality is that he suffered a freak accident, it doesn’t make it look any less bloody, or nasty. And, despite the horror injury, he continued to train, and then go on to win — in style.
GIVEMESPORT attended the UFC 311 event live and scored the first two rounds to Nurmagomedov, but Dvalishvili may well have one of the greatest engines in all combat sports as he kept on competing at a high level, won the third round, leveled the scoreline in the fourth, and took the fifth to win 3-2 on our unofficial card. The judges saw it similarly to us, and handed Dvalishvili a unanimous decision win.
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Merab Dvalishvili Suffered a Horror Injury in Training
Photos and video show Dvalishvili’s leg was a bloody mess in camp
It was not long before footage of Dvalishvili’s injury made it to social media. It shows a clearly lacerated wound.
His coach John Wood explained what caused the injury when talking to Submission Radio: “He got his leg cut up on our bleachers.”
“And basically he couldn’t use that leg the entire camp.”
“He jumped the wrong way and pinched his vertebrae and couldn’t walk for a week.”
Regardless, it did not change the result.
Ranked No.7 pound-for-pound by the UFC’s own metrics, few fighters are higher through all the weight classes as Dvalishvili is behind only Islam Makhachev, Jon Jones, Alex Pereira, Ilia Topuria, Belal Muhammad, and Dricus du Plessis.
Dvalishvili has already beaten the No.1, No.2, and No.3-ranked fighters in his weight class and, if he’s to fight an opponent he’s not fought before, he’d have to look to No.4-ranked Cory Sandhagen, or No.5-ranked Deiveson Figuereido.
