{"id":215814,"date":"2025-10-15T18:03:14","date_gmt":"2025-10-15T18:03:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/215814\/"},"modified":"2025-10-15T18:03:14","modified_gmt":"2025-10-15T18:03:14","slug":"dana-white-now-very-warm-to-impressive-merab-despite-frustrating-past","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/215814\/","title":{"rendered":"Dana White now very warm to \u2018impressive\u2019 Merab despite frustrating past"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Merab Dvalishvili may have (finally) won his most difficult battle to date \u2014 securing the approval of UFC CEO, Dana White.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">\u201cHe wants to be the first guy to defend his title that many times in a year,\u201d White added. \u201cIf you look at what he\u2019s gone out there and done, and how he\u2019s proven himself as a fighter, and as a world champion, it\u2019s impressive.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Dvalishvili (21-4) has now won 14 straight fights, which leaves him in fourth place for the all-time record. \u201cThe Machine\u201d can pull even with former UFC middleweight champion Anderson Silva at 16 with just two more wins; however, he\u2019s currently trailing former lightweight kingpin, Islam Makhachev, tied with Kamaru Usman at 15.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Merab Dvalishvili may have (finally) won his most difficult battle to date \u2014 securing the approval of UFC&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":215815,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,40762,785,85,1396,1647],"class_list":{"0":"post-215814","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-latest-ufc-mma-news","12":"tag-mma","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-ufc-news","15":"tag-upcoming-ufc-events"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215814","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=215814"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215814\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/215815"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215814"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215814"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215814"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}