{"id":102901,"date":"2025-08-28T22:01:11","date_gmt":"2025-08-28T22:01:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/102901\/"},"modified":"2025-08-28T22:01:11","modified_gmt":"2025-08-28T22:01:11","slug":"merab-dvalishvili-wants-fight-with-petr-yan-before-end-of-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/102901\/","title":{"rendered":"Merab Dvalishvili wants fight with Petr Yan before end of 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"

Merab Dvalishvili still has a title defense coming up at UFC 321 on October 4th,<\/a> but that hasn\u2019t stopped him from planning his next fight before the end of 2025.<\/p>\n

If Dvalishvili has his way, he\u2019ll beat Cory Sandhagen a month from now in Las Vegas and then fight again as soon as possible. He even has his opponent picked out.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I win, I want to turnaround quick and fight in December,\u201d he said on the Full Send Podcast. \u201cI will ask the UFC for a favor to give me another fight in December or even November. Petr Yan is clear contender right now. He deserve it. I don\u2019t wanna make him wait too long.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s some supreme cockiness from \u201cThe Machine.\u201d Not only does he believe he\u2019ll beat Sandhagen, but that he\u2019ll emerge completely unscathed and capable of fighting another top name immediately after. But Merab is riding high on confidence, as the interview showed.<\/p>\n

When asked about potentially rematching \u2018spoiled baby\u2019<\/a> Umar Nurmagomedov, Dvalishvili didn\u2019t hold back.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we fought again I would destroy him,\u201d he said. \u201cThis time I will beat the s–t out of him. I win so I can talk about this now. My back was killing me, and then I had infection in my leg and that was very stressful training camp.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another man with a dislike for Nurmagomedovs<\/a> is Conor McGregor, and Dvalishvili says he may end up traveling after his next two 2025 fights to train with \u201cThe Notorious.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I was in China I met his friends and we Facetimed and he asked me if we could training and I said \u2018Let\u2019s go, Conor. I would like to training with you.\u2019 Now I have a fight, I\u2019m not gonna go nowhere. After my fight I wanna fight again this year. After I can go visit him.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those are some big plans — two title defenses back to back in one of the toughest divisions of the sport. Dvalishvili certainly seems untouchable right now, but walking into a second fight with little time to recover doesn\u2019t seem wise. But then again, fighting Umar with a bum back<\/a> wasn\u2019t wise either. That\u2019s why we love Dvalishvili, that madman.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Merab Dvalishvili still has a title defense coming up at UFC 321 on October 4th, but that hasn\u2019t…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":102902,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,785,85,1396],"class_list":{"0":"post-102901","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mma","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-fighting","11":"tag-mma","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-ufc-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102901","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102901"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102901\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/102902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}