Former UFC bantamweight champion Merab Dvalishvili released footage of him being attacked in a hotel in Abu Dhabi by Usman Nurmagomedov and his friends, resulting in 10 arrests.
Dvalishvili has said that ‘Usman and his buddies came up from behind and started punching me and my young friend’, and that ‘they kept kicking us when we were down like losers’.
Fellow MMA fighter Ilia Topuria shared a video on Wednesday (11 November) showing footage of the brawl and denouncing the ‘bunch of absolute cowards’ who started it.
Dvalishvili posted his own video showing his bloodstained face as he received treatment, as he claimed he’d just been doing an interview in the lobby when he was attacked from behind.
He said: “What a sneaky way, guys. Just two of us, me and my friend, came here in Abu Dhabi, and Usman Nurmagomedov and his friends came like snakes from behind.
Merab Dvalishvili said he was doing an interview in the hotel lobby when he was attacked (Jeff Bottari/Zuffa LLC)
“What kind of fighters you guys are? What kind of man does this, bro? If you want to fight, let’s do it like the real way. You came just because there’s the two of us?
“We bleed, we fight, we war, but you guys are just sneaky guys. You’re not real men. It shows you guys’ character. It shows you’re not real men. If you want to fight, fight. We are fighters, bro.”
He accused Nurmagomedov of attacking them from behind and ‘waiting for us in a sneaky way’, with Abu Dhabi police later confirming that 10 people had been arrested.
“Abu Dhabi Police arrested eight individuals involved in a fight that occurred at the entrance of a hotel following previous disputes between them,” police said in a statement.
“They also arrested two individuals who filmed the incident and took the necessary legal measures against them.”
When asked about the fight UFC boss Dana White called it ‘absolutely ridiculous and stupid’, saying that everyone involved was now in jail and that Abu Dhabi was not the place to be pulling such stunts.
Dvalishvili and Nurmagomedov are supposed to be at the Real American Freestyle (RAF) event tomorrow where they are scheduled to fight Marlon Moraes and Urijah Faber respectively.
There’s been bad blood between the two in the past as Dvalishvili called Nurmagomedov’s older brother Umar ‘spoiled’ before defeating him last year.
The BBC reports that the two fighter’s camps had an altercation back in July, with Nurmagomedov’s training partner Islam Makhachev claiming it had something to do with the more recent fight.
Makhachev asked where the reaction was when ‘Merab hit a Dagestani wrestler for nothing and hurt his honor’, claiming the fighter had hit a guest and insulted his mother.
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