Aiemann Zahabi has been a longtime Tristar product, so comparing someone to one of his legendary gym compatriots over the years, Georges St. Pierre, is high praise not to be taken lightly. Zahabi drew a comparison between the former two-division champion and the current bantamweight kingpin, Merab Dvalishvili, ahead of the latter\u2019s next title defense.<\/p>\n
Aiemann Zahabi has his own high-stakes bantamweight bout to focus on as he takes on Marlon \u2018Chito\u2019 Vera in a battle of ranked bantamweight contenders at UFC Vancouver on October 18th. Zahabi appeared on MMA Canada to give his thoughts on not just the \u2018Chito\u2019 Vera clash, but also on the upcoming bantamweight title fight on October 4th.<\/p>\n
When touching on that bout between reigning titleholder Merab Dvalishvili<\/a> and Cory Sandhagen at UFC 320, Zahabi said,<\/p>\n \u201cMan, very interesting fight. Guys, I think it\u2019s going to be great to watch. Okay, first of all, bantamweight division, the guys are great. All very good. I think that Cory did some really good stuff against Umar [Nurmagomedov] in terms of granbying out, you know, defending the back by grabbing the ankles up. Like, he didn\u2019t get dominated on the ground at all, you know.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cObviously I\u2019m sure he\u2019s been refining that stuff to get better at them already. And now he\u2019s facing a guy similar to Umar in terms of like we know Merab\u2019s going to shoot eventually. He\u2019s going to shoot, you know, it\u2019s no secret. And he\u2019s like GSP in that sense that we all knew GSP was going to shoot. He\u2019s taking you down anyway, man [laughs]. Merab\u2019s going to take you down no matter what.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThat is something you need to make peace with. And I feel like Cory is the type of fighter who\u2019s made that peace, but he\u2019s also smart enough to find a way that okay, as I\u2019m going down, how can I go down in the best possible scenario? Roll out, maybe not get dominated, find a way back up to my feet? Can I get him exhausted? Can I roll in a way where maybe I end up on top of Merab?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Aiemann Zahabi thinks Cory Sandhagen will \u201chave better strike output than [Sean] O\u2019Malley against Merab [Dvalishvili]\u201d<\/p>\n As he further expounded upon his bout breakdown for the UFC 320<\/a> co-main event, Zahabi continued,<\/p>\n \u201cLet\u2019s see Merab on his back, you know. So, I think it\u2019s going to be a really good fight. I also find that the height is going to play a good role because I think that Cory\u2019s going to be more willing to throw the knee than Sean O\u2019Malley was. I think Cory\u2019s bringing in a better grappling, better granby rolls than [O\u2019Malley] was bringing in. So, I think he\u2019s going to have better strike output than O\u2019Malley against Merab<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBut that is to be seen. But if you were to ask me who\u2019s gonna win, I think Merab is gonna win by taking him down and and dominating him on the ground eventually. You know, that\u2019s what I think is gonna happen.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI could be wrong. I could be wrong. He\u2019s been rocked many times before and Cory\u2019s a slick switcher. So he might catch him on one of the switches with a nice strike or a nice knee or a nice elbow, very dynamic striker. It\u2019s a must see. Must see, for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Aiemann Zahabi has been a longtime Tristar product, so comparing someone to one of his legendary gym compatriots…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":169678,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[75376,49,48,21904,641,21903,638,82,44038,75381],"class_list":{"0":"post-169677","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mma","8":"tag-aiemann-zahabi","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-cory-sandhagen","12":"tag-fighting","13":"tag-merab-dvalishvili","14":"tag-mma","15":"tag-sports","16":"tag-ufc-320","17":"tag-ufc-vancouver"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169677","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=169677"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169677\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/169678"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=169677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=169677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=169677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}