Georgian sensation Merab Dvalishvili is preparing for the first defense of his bantamweight title, which will arrive in just a few weeks’ time at UFC 311 in Los Angeles.
This week, ‘The Machine’ took a short break from training to sit down with veteran UFC coach Eric Nicksick; revealing that he once beat up Hollywood actor Kevin James without knowing who the silver-screen star even was.
Merab Dvalishvili recaps beating up Hollywood actor in sparring
At Ray Longo’s MMA gym in New York, UFC bantamweight champion Merab Dvalishvili has been able to train with some of the best MMA fighters in the world and as it turns out, even one or two Hollywood superstars.
Speaking on Nicksick’s ‘Verse Us’ Podcast, Dvalishvili would hilariously recap the time he beat up famed actor Kevin James, star of the MMA movie ‘Here Comes the Boom’, after mistaking the actor for a retired wrestler.
“It was the summertime, and Chris Weidman made a text group, he said ‘Okay guys let’s train in the morning in our pro groups’, so I go – maybe there was like eight guys there; Al Iaquinta, Aljamain Sterling, James Gonzales, Chris Weidman – and there is some a little bit fat guy.
“We’re all pros, so I saw this guy and in my head, I’m like ‘Is this guy a former fighter, maybe an older wrestler?’ – [because] only us pro guys were invited.”
This training session reportedly took place in 2018, six years after Here Comes the Boom came out, although according to Dvalishvili, James was still in decent shape and took the training quite seriously.
“Anyway, we warm up, did some training but now we’ve got gloves and shin guards and we’re going to do sparring – and everyone grabs their training partner, and I got this guy Kevin James; he looked familiar, but I had no idea [who he was].
“So we’re in the cage sparring and he’s kind of throwing heavy, hard [shots] and then like, when I tried something, he would be there hitting heavy. I see he is trying to fight.”
As Nicknick and co-host Randy Faehnrich burst into laughter, Dvalishvili would admit that since James came in with a “hard pace,” he had to teach the Hollywood actor an equally hard lesson.
“He knows [how to fight], he’s not like at the very beginning [of training], he has a hard pace and then I have to go hard [too], move around, chop the leg and punch and shoot [takedowns]… I had to do my best because he’s bigger than me and stronger than me.
“I was going hard to hopefully make him tired and break him – I really went hard I remember – and then after, I don’t what Kevin James told Chris Weidman, but Chris started laughing like ‘Merab, you don’t know who this is?!’ – I had no clue.”
Over the past two years or so, Dvalishvili’s personality has come to the forefront in a fantastic way, with his comedy skits on social media even rivaling those of featherweight Alexander Volkanovski.
But there’ll be no joking around come January 18, when Dvalishvili steps back into the octagon to defend his bantamweight title against undefeated contender Umar Nurmagomedov.
UFC 311 goes down live from LA on Saturday, January 18.