Mini-Strickland Merab Sees Umar Conspiracy

Merab Dvalishvili was at it again at UFC 310, where he attacked a fan of Shavkat Rakhmonov before being dragged backstage by security.

Another day, another brawl, another fan getting punched in the face. No big deal, according to UFC CEO Dana White.

This time it was Merab Dvalishvili and UFC lightweight Dennis Buzukja who got into it with a Shavkat Rakhmonov fan in the crowd after cornering Aljamain Sterling in the prelims. Security wrangled “The Machine” backstage but Buzukja exchanged punches with the fan, who would end up hanging out with Merab’s next opponent, Umar Nurmagomedov.

“This isn’t his first altercation,” White said of the incident. “I don’t know if you guys noticed at the press conference yesterday too — somebody yelled something, he’s in the middle of conversation. He looked like he’s trying to see who said that. Like what? You’re gonna run over there and you’re gonna fight this guy too?”

“It just the way he is. He’s built that way. And I don’t know if you saw, but he wasn’t sitting in the regular fighter section. We had to move him over. I had to move the other two guys over at our table. We try to diffuse this stuff before it happens. And tonight, we had a good game plan. I didn’t think he’d get into a fight walking out with Aljamain.”

“He’s my mini Strickland without the mouth,” White said later. “What do you do? Let them buy the pay-per-view, I guess. I don’t know. You can’t keep fighting the f—ing fans. It’s gonna cost you a lot. You can do it. It’s gonna cost you a lot of money. Right? I say it all the time. We’re in the f—ing fight business. This happens. We gotta deal with it.”

“Tonight, we tried. We took Islam [Umar], took them out, put them [cageside], moved Merab over to the other side, had Umar and his crew over in the middle, and we still had problems … We do our best.”

White was asked what he thought of Dvalishvili’s extremely vocal attempt to avoid Nurmagomedov as his first title challenger. He’d eventually relent, but it was pretty obvious he didn’t want to fight Umar. Was it fear?

“I don’t think that any of these guys are afraid of anybody,” White replied. “I’m sure there’s certain guys they’d rather wait to fight, and they all have their reasons or whatever. But Merab is fighting people in the f—ing stands, okay? Merab would get in a fight in the middle of the the fighter section. That’s why we moved him over to the left.”

“So I wouldn’t say that any of these guys are afraid of anybody or any fight. But fighters are a paranoid bunch. There’s always some conspiracy against them, whether it’s us or other people or we make fights that people wanna see. They win or lose the fights on their own, but they [see] conspiracy there. They always think that somebody is against them.”

“Maybe that’s what they need to have that mental thing to go out and do what they do,” White concluded.