Death Row MMA podcast<\/a>. \u201cI remember him coming up I was like, \u2018God, damn, this motherf*cker is so skilled. There\u2019s just something about \u2014 he\u2019s a little Russian, he\u2019s f*cking balding; he\u2019s a scary little dude. So he\u2019s always been one of my favorite fighters to watch. Mean little f*cker.<\/p>\n\u201cI recently watched his last fight with Merab a couple days ago, and it was such a beautiful performance. Him elbowing his forearm, and Merab, after the first round, holding it. It was just such a beautiful performance. It was one of the sickest performances I\u2019ve ever seen. \u2026<\/p>\n
\u201c[Dvalishvili] was two for 24 or something, takedowns. He only officially scored two takedowns. His defensive wrestling was so slick. And then [Yan] slamming Merab on his head and taking him down a few other times, it was such a beautiful performance.\u201d<\/p>\n
O\u2019Malley has a long history with Dvalishvili, having lost twice to \u201cThe Machine,\u201d first dropping the bantamweight title to him in 2024 and then losing their rematch in June of last year. He also has a history with Yan, having fought him at UFC 280 in 2022, when O\u2019Malley won a split decision to launch himself into title contention. Now, O\u2019Malley is set to fight Song Yadong at UFC 324 later this month, and if he beats Song, \u201cSuga\u201d believes Yan will get another opportunity to get a win back, this time against him.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think I go out there and beat Song, me vs. Petr at the White House just makes sense,\u201d O\u2019Malley said. \u201cWhat\u2019s a bigger fight than that? If we\u2019re going off just pure, big fights. If we\u2019re going off what makes the absolute most sense, which is not always what the UFC goes off of, I think Merab deserves a title shot. But if you\u2019re going off what the f*ck is the biggest fight, me vs. Petr, rematch at the White House seems like the biggest fight.\u201d<\/p>\n
UFC 324 takes place on Jan. 24 at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, and will be headlined by an interim lightweight title fight between Justin Gaethje and Paddy Pimblett.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In December, Yan rematched Merab Dvalishvili for the bantamweight title at UFC 323. After losing their first fight…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":406206,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[49,48,641,701,638,82,640,702],"class_list":{"0":"post-406205","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mma","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-fighting","11":"tag-latest-news","12":"tag-mma","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-ufc","15":"tag-ufc-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406205","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=406205"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406205\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/406206"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=406205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=406205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=406205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}