Petr Yan just fought the fight of his life, putting on an absolute clinic against Merab Dvalishvili at UFC 323 in Las Vegas. At the end of the night, the judges awarded Yan the bantamweight belt with 49–46, 49–46, and 48–47 scores (watch the highlights here).
Dvalishvili immediately called for a rematch and with the quality of their fight it’s pretty much impossible to imagine the UFC won’t set up a rubber match between the two. But the Georgian fighter might want to make some changes, according to the UFC commentary
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“Trying to win four UFC title fights in a calendar year, whether you’re a machine or not, is a lot,” Jon Anik said during the outro to the UFC 323 pay-per-view.
“It’s a giant factor,” Joe Rogan said of Dvalishvili’s heavy schedule before adding, “I think a giant factor was the weight cut for Merab is absolutely brutal.”
“You’ve heard what he’s said: ‘I don’t trust nutritionists, I do it my way,'” Rogan continued. “You know what his way is? He stops eating on Tuesday. That’s so crazy. I’m not even saying that’s a factor in the fight because skill wise, what Petr Yan brought to the table was the giant factor.”
It’s true: Dvalishvili’s cardio remained bulletproof during the fight as “The Machine” pushed hard for the full five rounds of the fight. But doing that to your body can’t help. Daniel Cormier also brought up Merab’s outdated weight cutting measures during fight week.
“So what he does, this is crazy,” DC told CBS Sports. “He doesn’t do the way that the UFC PI wants with nutrition and kinda gradually bringing the weight down. He actually doesn’t cut weight until fight week. And then when he gets to, like, Wednesday, he completely shuts himself off from any hydration, any food.”
“So he essentially starves himself from Wednesday to Friday to make the weight, and then he tries to recover before he gets into the [cage]. That is why he hates the weight cut so much because he knows that starting yesterday, he’s pretty much done with intaking anything before he steps on that scale on Friday.”
“That is the danger for a guy like Merab because the weight cut is so difficult to put his body through that four times in one calendar year is crazy,” he continued. “And the consistent fighting, even for the best at times, has proven to become an issue. The great Alex Pereira was fighting over and over and over, and then he got beat. Then he took nine months off, came back, fought the same guy and knocked him out in the round.”
After what we just saw, one could argue that there was no version of Dvalishvili that would have beaten Petr Yan. “No Mercy” was just too on point in the T-Mobile Arena tonight. But Merab was more drained coming into UFC 323 than we’ve ever seen him before. The cuts, especially the way he does them, must take a toll.
Will he take a break, make the changes needed, and trust the nutritionists when he gets his rematch against Petr Yan?
For more UFC 323 results, coverage, and highlights click HERE.
