{"id":181229,"date":"2025-10-01T00:06:06","date_gmt":"2025-10-01T00:06:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/181229\/"},"modified":"2025-10-01T00:06:06","modified_gmt":"2025-10-01T00:06:06","slug":"merab-dvalishvili-promises-to-beat-former-rival-like-a-sack-in-potential-rematch-after-ufc-320","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/181229\/","title":{"rendered":"Merab Dvalishvili promises to beat former rival &#8216;like a sack&#8217; in potential rematch after UFC 320"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>UFC bantamweight champion Merab Dvalishvili still has serious animosity towards one of his former rivals, whom he\u2019d like to fight again after UFC 320.<\/p>\n<p>Merab Dvalishvili is days away from making his third bantamweight title defense of 2025 at UFC 320. Dvalishvili and Cory Sandhagen will square off in the UFC 320 co-main event in a highly anticipated stylistic matchup.<\/p>\n<p>After earning the bantamweight title by defeating Sean O\u2019Malley at UFC 306, Dvalishvili has finished O\u2019Malley and outpointed the previously unbeaten Umar Nurmagomedov during his reign. \u2018The Machine\u2019 is one of the top pound-for-pound fighters in the world, and is quickly making a strong case to be atop the list.<\/p>\n<p>Despite his dominant run in 2025, capped off by winning an ESPY earlier this summer, Dvalishvili believes he has <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bjpenn.com\/mma-news\/merab-dvalishvili\/merab-dvalishvili-goes-off-on-spoiled-umar-nurmagomedov\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">unfinished business with the man he defeated<\/a> to begin the year at UFC 311.<\/p>\n<p>So much so that Dvalishvili claims he was too cautious the first time around, a mistake he won\u2019t make in a potential rematch.<\/p>\n<p>Merab Dvalishvili vs. Umar Nurmagomedov 2?<\/p>\n<p>During a recent interview with <a href=\"https:\/\/app.setantasports.com\/home\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Setanta Sports<\/a>, Dvalishvili aimed at Umar Nurmagomedov in a fiery rant ahead of his UFC 320 title defense.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf I have to fight Umar Nurmagomedov next, I\u2019m confident I\u2019ll break him this time and beat him clean,\u201d Dvalishvili said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOur last fight wasn\u2019t like that. I was controlling things and won without taking unnecessary risks or headaches, but I won\u2019t let him off and out of the Octagon this time. I\u2019ll break him in the first minute and a half, then drag him around the Octagon for the remaining\u00a0 23 1\/2 minutes like a sack\u2026<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAs we Georgians say, I\u2019ll drag him all over the Octagon like a sack. Even after losing, he didn\u2019t learn his lesson.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Nurmagomedov will fight for the first time since his first-career loss at UFC 311, later in October at UFC 321. Nurmagomedov faces Mario Bautista in a pivotal matchup in the bantamweight division\u2019s title picture.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"UFC bantamweight champion Merab Dvalishvili still has serious animosity towards one of his former rivals, whom he\u2019d like&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":181230,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,25363,785,85,787,116409,60152,90270],"class_list":{"0":"post-181229","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-merab-dvalishvili","12":"tag-mma","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-ufc","15":"tag-ufc-311","16":"tag-ufc-320","17":"tag-umar-nurmagomedov"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181229","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=181229"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181229\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/181230"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}