Merab Dvalishvili’s UFC bantamweight title came to an abrupt end with a loss to Petr Yan at UFC 323 last Saturday in Las Vegas. In an instant five-round classic, Dvalishvili lost to Yan by unanimous decision as the former titleholder regained the bantamweight belt.
It was a stunning result for Dvalishvili after rising to become one of the best pound-for-pound fighters in the world. Dvalishvili was not as successful with his elite wrestling against Yan in their rematch as he was in his record-setting performance against Yan in their first match in 2023.
For the first time since UFC 323, Dvalishvili’s coach talked about his student’s performance and how he analyzes what’s happening inside the Octagon.
Coach John Wood has hinted that behind-the-scenes issues led to the loss of Merab Dvalishvili
In a recent interview with MMA fightingcoach John Wood was asked for his initial assessment of what went wrong for Dvalishvili at UFC 323.
“I thought we were winning and controlling and I thought we were pressing and doing what we had to do,” Wood said of Dvalishvili’s loss.
“Petr definitely had the bigger moments and I think that has changed [the fight] and you just don’t know. There are times when judges don’t care, you don’t understand that, you don’t see that. But he had the bigger moments in those things and that really drove the damage and the gore, those were the things that added up and took over. That was my fault because I didn’t have a little more control over the optics there of what we were doing. But then again, a fight is a fight. Sometimes things just don’t go the way you want.
“It sucks. It’s like waking up from a nightmare,” Wood continued about Dvalishvili. “This isn’t going away. I thought we had the right things going on in this camp and it was a fast camp and it was a tough camp. There’s a lot of things going on behind the scenes. But it was Petr’s night.”
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