{"id":961673,"date":"2026-11-12T10:16:09","date_gmt":"2026-11-12T10:16:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/961673\/"},"modified":"2026-11-12T10:16:09","modified_gmt":"2026-11-12T10:16:09","slug":"ufc-usman-nurmagomedov-slaps-merab-dvalishvili-to-spark-mass-brawl-in-abu-dhabi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/961673\/","title":{"rendered":"UFC: Usman Nurmagomedov slaps Merab Dvalishvili to spark mass brawl in Abu Dhabi"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dvalishvili called Nurmagomedov’s older brother, Umar, “spoiled” before beating him in a bantamweight title fight in 2025.<\/p>\n

Umar Nurmagomedov is due to take on American Urijah Faber at Saturday’s event.<\/p>\n

There was previously an altercation between the two camps before the RAF event in July.<\/p>\n

UFC champion Islam Makhachev, who is a close friend and training partner of the Nurmagomedovs, suggested that incident led to Wednesday’s altercation.<\/p>\n

“Why were you silent when Merab hit a Dagestani wrestler for nothing and hurt his honor?” Makhachev wrote. <\/p>\n

“Merab started what happened today in his homeland by allowing himself to hit a guest and insulting his mother.”<\/p>\n

Two-weight UFC champion Ilia Topuria, a friend of Dvalishvili, shared the footage of the incident on X and wrote: “Usman has reportedly been detained, along with the cowards who were with him.<\/p>\n

“What a disgrace. A bunch of absolute cowards. I always thought you were a bunch of mediocre individuals. Now you’ve removed every last doubt.<\/p>\n

“Honour, respect, and humility aren’t words you preach. They’re values you live by. And you’ve shown none of them.”<\/p>\n

Nurmagomedov is a free agent after his last fight with the PFL<\/a> and has been heavily linked with a switch to the UFC.<\/p>\n

MMA fighters often compete in RAF events alongside their careers in bigger promotions, with the likes of Khamzat Chimaev, Arman Tsarukyan and Colby Covington all recently appearing in the promotion. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dvalishvili called Nurmagomedov’s older brother, Umar, “spoiled” before beating him in a bantamweight title fight in 2025. Umar…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":961674,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,785,85],"class_list":["post-961673","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-mma","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/961673","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=961673"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/961673\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/961674"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=961673"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=961673"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=961673"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}