Merab Dvalishvili has been looking unbeatable in the past few years as he tears a path towards bantamweight greatness, but it wasn’t always this way.
As recently as April of 2018, he was on a two-fight losing streak and faced the chop from the UFC before launching into one of the sport’s greatest runs. His final defeat came against Ricky Simon, who won by technical submission in an outlandish fight in Atlantic City.
Now, Dvalishvili has claimed that he actually knocked himself out in order to lose that fight. In fact, he claims, the only major damage he has undergone has been self-inflicted during his career.
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Merab Dvalishvili claims he knocked himself out in defeat to Ricky Simon
Merab Dvalishvili is now one of the most fearsome champions in the UFC, but there was a time where he was once in major trouble and at risk of losing his contract. After dropping a controversial decision to Frankie Saenz, he was defeated in outlandish fashion by Ricky Simon.
As the Georgian shot in for a takedown, he ended up slamming his head on the canvas and was out for the count as Simon locked in a guillotine. However, he managed to wake up and continue kicking his legs, until eventually the bell sounded and he appeared to have survived.
But when he emerged looking dazed and out of it, referee Liam Kerrigan decided to call the fight a TKO, which later was changed to Technical Submission. But speaking at UFC 316 media day, the current bantamweight champion claimed that he KO’d himself.
“In every fight I never get hurt,” he told the press including Bloody Elbow. “I hurt myself. Like my second fight when I was fighting Ricky Simon and I took him down and I landed on my head and knocked myself out.
“That was the only fight I got damaged, every other fight I’m usually fresh with only a few scratches. After the fights I’m always healthy and injury-free.”
Merab Dvalishvili is infamous for self-inflicted injuries
However, this string of self-inflicted injuries has cost Dvalishvili over the years, with a number of well-documented injuries outside of the cage. He infamously dove directly onto a frozen ice lake, and suffered a gruesome cut that put his UFC 311 defense against Umar Nurmagomedov in jeopardy.
“Outside of the cage I do lots of crazy stuff,” he continued. “Especially when I’m in nature something can happen where an animal wakes up on me. But most of my injuries come from training.”
He is currently cutting weight for the main event of UFC 316 against Sean O’Malley, and has had to overcome a broken toe suffered just weeks out from the fight. However, he insists that the weight cut is the harder to deal with of the two struggles.