John Wood knows the question is coming before it’s asked.
This Saturday at UFC 311, the head coach of Syndicate MMA leads Merab Dvalishvili into battle for their first defense of the UFC bantamweight title against Umar Nurmagomedov, the cousin of former lightweight giant Khabib Nurmagomedov.
He’s almost wincing mid-sentence as he hears the same inquiry coming his way, a death by a thousand paper cuts:
“Are you worried about how emotional Merab is ahead of this fight?”
To his credit, he dutifully obliges the inquirer.
“Merab’s an emotional guy, he wears his heart on his sleeve,” Wood tells Uncrowned.
“He’s a very prideful guy. Georgian people are prideful people by nature. There are certain things that we as Americans get away with, there are no repercussions for what we do sometimes, and that’s not what happens in these other countries.
“I actually prefer the Georgian way. You shouldn’t have a right to say things about people and then when you see them face-to-face, there are no repercussions. Merab is an emotional guy. He’s just that guy, but the good thing about his emotions is that we can get them pointed in the right direction so they can be used as fuel.”
It’s not the first time Dvalishvili has been pitted against a UFC poster boy, or in the case of Umar Nurmagomedov, a potential one. Back in September, after a full week of seeing Sean O’Malley emblazoned on every billboard on Las Vegas Boulevard for UFC 306, Dvalishvili put on his hard hat and worked over one of the UFC’s brightest stars for 25 minutes to capture his title.
The new UFC bantamweight champion probably thought things would be different when the gold belt was wrapped around his waist. Now he would get to call his shots. Now he would get the respect he deserves after climbing to the top of the bantamweight mountain.
Unfortunately for the newly minted champion, the booking of his clash with Nurmagomedov likely confirmed that nothing changed at all.
Instead of fighting any of the three former UFC champions Dvalishvili had to take out to get a bantamweight title shot, Nurmagomedov punched his ticket to a championship showdown with a single win over a perennial contender — albeit an impressive one over Cory Sandhagen. As far as Dvalishvili is concerned, his foe is wholly undeserving of the opportunity.
He publicly declared his disdain for Nurmagomedov in December when the duo traded barbs at UFC 311’s kickoff press conference, leading many to ponder whether all that emotion would obscure the champion’s efforts when the two eventually met.
For Wood, his fighter’s reaction to the situation is perfectly understandable.
“Becoming the champion the way he did and going through a murderer’s row to achieve what he achieved, beating everybody that we were supposed to be destroyed by, and then you still don’t really feel like you’re being given championship treatment — that’s something that has massively impacted what we’re seeing in Merab,” Wood says.
“I’ve told him many times that this is the nature of professional sports. We aren’t the ones who make decisions; that’s for the higher-ups, and whatever they say is what’s going to happen. There are very few guys in this sport that get to call their own shots. You have to play the proverbial game. At the end of the day, it’s a job.”
Given the prestigious surname of his latest opponent, Dvalishvili feels he’s still being put behind the eight-ball despite forging a legacy in gold. While the game came at “The Machine” slowly, it is rushing toward Nurmagomedov like a locomotive.
“Umar’s got a big push. There’s a lot of money behind him,” Wood explains. “There’s a lot of people and big backing that want to see him champion. I think that’s a factor in what we’ve seen play out here. He’s a great fighter, he’s as high a level as you can go, but we would be foolish not to acknowledge that his last name carries a lot of weight and [the UFC] is trying to fill these voids left by legends like Khabib.”
People tend to forget the most celebrated Nurmagomedov was forced to bide his time.
It wan’t until the UFC stripped Conor McGregor for inactivity 16 months after winning the title in 2016 that “The Eagle” took the championship belt in 2018. Although the UFC didn’t realize it at first, the promotion had a bonafide superstar on its hands with the Dagestani champion.
Despite many believing that UFC CEO Dana White would be rubbing his hands together if he had another champion named Nurmagomedov on his books, Wood is adamant that Dvalishvili can be the man to fill that void rather than the Hall of Famer’s undefeated cousin, whom Dvalishvili locks horns with at UFC 311.
“Khabib was not a very well-liked fighter by the fans or the media until eventually the UFC realized that he wasn’t going away and got behind him,” Wood says. “He unlocked a whole new market for them. It’s not like Khabib became any more of an exciting fighter than he was when he began, he just kept winning.
“It was like [Floyd] Mayweather in a way — even the people who wanted him to lose couldn’t help but tune in. Winning cures everything in this sport and I do believe that Merab will be in that position one day.”
