Merab Dvalishvili's coach John Wood has told how the Bantam weight champion has failed one of America's strictest committees to have him fight by an injury.
On the way to his UFC 311 confrontation with Umar Nurmagomedov, title defender Dvalishvili suffered a series of injuries, including a back problem and a serious cut on his right shin. The latter was not healed for months and eventually became infected while he continued to train through it.
Eventually he told the media after the fight, it managed to cure a reasonable part halfway through the Vechtweek. Wood, however, notes that during medical checks during the week he had to hide the injury due to a skilled.
Merab Dvalishvili has fooled California Commission to hide injuries for the last fight
While he continued medical tests for his fight in January, Merab Dvalishvili had to show off injuries or problems he had had. His arms, hands, body, head, feet and legs would all have been viewed by a doctor to ensure that he was cleaned up.
However, if it arrived on his legs, he did not want to cause an alarm by showing how bad the cut had become on his tibia. So when he showed his left leg, he used the doctor who was distracted by something else to maneuver around and when he was asked to show his other leg, he showed the left side again.
Wood told the hilarious story on Submission Radio and said: “The big thing was that I did not think he would even be released by the committee after they had seen his leg. It clearly succeeded, looked at him in the sparring and how he performed in the room, gave me the confidence that he could do it.
“All the way to the day before the fight, we did not know whether the committee would look at that leg and free him. Fortunately he pulled the old trick and showed the same leg twice and they bought it.
“We sat back there, I literally sat opposite him-a brick because I didn't know what would go on. They were like” hey, let's check your leg “and he was wearing training pants, so he pulled his pacifier on his good leg.
“He pulled it down again, Guy looked at the paper and looked back and said,” Show me the other “and he shows him the same! I started to laugh … I would have given it a 50/50 or even more than a 50/50 [that the fight would have been cancelled].
“Just because of the way it looked, it still had a kind of open wound, you can see his leg to this day, is still drawn with a madman. But fighting is crazy, man. Fighters do crazy things and that is how we are paid.”
Merab Dvalishvili is currently fighting a broken toe
It has become commonplace for the Bantam weight champion to suffer a kind of injury during the camp. He tends to let people know during the camp, as long as it is not too serious, and last week he shared images of his broken toe on his way to UFC 316 next week.
He is confronted with Sean O'Malley in a rematch and needs his footwork to be flawless to be a striker who is accurate. But Wood seems convinced that it will not be a problem and said earlier in the entry radio interview that he would keep a little too serious for himself.
Photo by Mike Roach/Zuffa LLC
“Guys, if he posts something, it's really not that bad and he won't be that bad,” Wood kept full. “I am sure he broke his toe, but every camp every hunter, even Sean says it, is up and there is a level of only injuries that make you fight.
“That is the way it is, it will be and it is always that way. It is just one of those things that Merab clearly likes to post about something more than everyone else. It is good, he is all good.”