UFC bantamweight champion Merab Dvalishvili is one of the toughest fighters on the UFC roster, but even he admits that newly crowned lightweight champion Ilia Topuria was too much for him to handle in training.
“I sparred with him,” Dvalishvili said on the Ariel Helwani Show. “He has a great wrestling, great jiu-jitsu, we all know that he hits like a…
“…I can’t spar with him anymore because he hits hard. He dropped me two times from body shots. Thank god my head is fine. Every time I finished sparring with him I was happy and, ‘thank god!'”
Dvalishvili isn’t the only bantamweight ace who is thankful to not have to fight Topuria, as former champion Sean O’Malley joked at the weekend that he’s grateful the 155lb champ didn’t accept when he called him out after winnin the title last year.
“Thank god he didn’t accept my callout,” O’Malley said on his YouTube channel after witnessing Topuria’s brutal knockout of Charles Oliveira on Saturday night.
It’s rare for high-level stars like Dvalishvili and O’Malley to be so open to bowing down to a fellow fighter in a nearby division, but perhaps there’s no shame in acknowledging it given that Topuria has also knocked out UFC legends Alexander Volkanovski and Max Holloway during his dominant run to become a champion in two divisions.
Just nine fights into his UFC run there’s already talk that the undefeated Topuria may be compiling one of the all-time great winning streaks in the sport, and this week’s updated rankings reflect that as he’s just been installed as the new No.1 pound-for-pound fighter by the UFC, pushing Islam Makhachev down to the No.2 spot.
