Dvalishvili hid a bad cut on his from commission doctors heading into UFC 311, and he did it in the most hilarious way possible.
Merab Dvalishvili is going to go down in history as one of the craziest champions the UFC has ever seen.
This is a guy who can’t stop attacking fans who trash talk him. Say something negative to him at an event and he’ll leap into the stands to remind you this isn’t the internet. He’ll also pull a not-so-elaborate ruse to hide a bad injury just so he can stay in a fight he didn’t even want in the first place.
By every account but the UFC’s, Dvalishvili had his arm twisted into accepting a title fight against Umar Nurmagomedov at UFC 311. Umar repeatedly suggested Merab would find an excuse to withdraw from their fight. Instead, it turns out “The Machine” pushed through a bad cut on his leg, a staph infection in that cut, and a pinched nerve in his back to compete on January 18th.
“You showed them the same leg twice?!?!”
Merab told @arielhelwani how he was able to get his leg injury past the athletic commission’s pre-fight tests #UFC311 #HelwaniShow pic.twitter.com/68CZjb4Ugc
— Uncrowned (@uncrownedcombat) January 20, 2025
He even pulled a fast one on the California State Athletic Commission to hide the extent of his cut leg, which took 27 stitches to close up and then got infected with staph.
“The cut was still open and it was taking so long to heal up, and it finally closed up in 5 week” Dvalishvili said on the Ariel Helwani Show. “I was worried to commission not gonna let me fight. I was doing everything, putting creams every day, doing massage and all the therapies.”
“California has a very strict commission and they check everything on my body,” he continued. “Thursday, I have pants on, and the commission guy asked me to show him leg, to show the shin. And I lift my left leg pants and show him the shin as he kept talking. And then the second time he asked me to show him the other leg, I show again the left leg”
“Yeah, who knows? Maybe I can pass, but I was worried that maybe because it looked fresh, but it’s been a long time cut.”
This has to be up there with the story of Michael Bisping memorizing the commission eye charts to hide he was blind in one eye. That’s a bit smarter and sneakier than what Merab pulled, but if it works, it ain’t stupid.