Just moments before Merab Dvalishvili stepped into the cage at UFC 316, he was almost faced with disaster.
This past Saturday at UFC 316 in Newark, New Jersey, Merab Dvalishvili continued his ascent to becoming the undeniable greatest bantamweight of all time when he submitted Sean O’Malley in round three.
Sean O’Malley‘s performance has been heavily criticized as he once again had nothing to offer ‘The Machine’, suffering back-to-back losses for the first time in his career.
In fact, the biggest threat to Dvalishvili on Saturday night came during his walkout after he narrowly avoided disaster on his walk to the cage.
Dvalishvili’s coach recalls terrifying UFC 316 walkout incident
As the Georgian machine emerged from backstage to make his walk to the cage, fans attempted to reach out and touch the champion.
With several fans leaning over the barrier, disaster struck when the metal gate blocking the fans from the walkway collapsed underneath them, resulting in multiple fans spilling out into Dvalishvili’s path.
Fortunately, security quickly huddled around Merab guarding him from any danger and quickly removing him from the near-catastrophic situation.
Just a day removed from the event, the champion’s coach John Wood detailed the incident and how close it was to becoming a serious issue.
“Oh my god, dude, we almost got crushed,” Wood told Submission Radio.
“I was s——- my pants, Merab got pushed out of the way as the thing was falling over and it fell right in front of us and almost landed on our feet. There were like five fans that broke the barricade and fell over and I was looking for people being thrusted into the damn thing, it was nuts, man.
“That was a holy s— moment for sure, that was freaky,” he continued.
Fortunately, after the event Bloody Elbow confirmed with officials that no one was seriously hurt during the incident.
Dvalishvili claimed he was almost knocked out during wild incident
Despite going on to make his way to the cage and subsequently putting on an all-time performance once again, ‘The Machine’ admitted after the fight that he was almost knocked out by the incident.
“That’s funny. What happened was I was walking, people tried to touch me, and then they almost knocked me out before I walked in. Then security put me against the wall, and I’m like, ‘I’m a fighter! Let me go!’ I saw what happened and I’m just a professional and there was nothing I could’ve done,” Dvalishvili told Bloody Elbow after the event.
Immediately after his fight, Joe Rogan claimed that Dvalishvili’s next opponent will likely be Cory Sandhagen, however, Dana White had different ideas in the post-fight press conference.