Untold stories of the UFC’s viral champion, Merab Dvalishvili
-
Brett Okamoto
IN FEBRUARY 2021, UFC bantamweight champion Merab Dvalishvili made one of the dumbest decisions of his life during one of the biggest snowstorms to hit Long Island, New York, in a decade. His coach, Ray Longo, told the entire Serra-Long Fight Team that the gym was closed for two days. Stay home. With training canceled, Dvalishvili went on a run around a nearby park. When he’d finished, he decided to have himself a nice little ice bath, right there in the lake.
“I don’t like to check the temperature of a bath before I get in, because it’s so cold and it makes it harder [to get in],” Dvalishvili tells ESPN. “I knew the water wasn’t deep, so I didn’t think I could jump in feetfirst. I wanted to jump in at an angle, like you do in shallow water. I didn’t realize the water was frozen.”
He went for it, pushing off the bank with both feet, hands outstretched. The ice broke, but not without a whole lot of resistance. Dvalishvili instantly stood up, put his hands on his head and began repeating, “F—, I am so stupid. I am so stupid. F—.”
Dvalishvili went straight to the emergency room, where a cut on the right side of his head was closed with staples. For the longest time, hair wouldn’t grow from the scar site. But after undergoing a hair transplant two years later, he looks good as new.
Diving headfirst into that lake is admittedly one of the dumbest things Dvalishvili has ever done. One of the smartest things he has ever done is post a video of the entire thing to the internet. It went viral and gained him tens of thousands of followers in a single day.
“I didn’t even remember I’d filmed it at first,” Dvalishvili says. “When I was walking home, I said, ‘Oh s—, I was filming.’ I watched it and I laughed at myself. I said, ‘I’m going to post it. Some people will call me stupid, but this is me, this is reality.'”
In speaking with those closest to him, as well as Dvalishvili himself, every part of this story — jumping into a frozen lake, filming himself doing it and laughing about it afterward — is classic Merab. The 34-year-old champion is a “lovable idiot,” in the words of one friend. He is obsessed with his phone and regularly films everything he does. Regardless of the situation, he is Act First, Think Second, Post to Social Media Third.
Dvalishvili (19-4) is scheduled to defend his 135-pound title in a rematch against Sean O’Malley (18-2) at UFC 316 on Saturday in New Jersey (10 p.m. ET on ESPN PPV, with prelims at 8 on ESPN/ESPN+/Disney+ and early prelims at 6 p.m. on ESPN+/Disney+). Although Dvalishvili took the belt from O’Malley in their first fight in October, O’Malley remains the bigger star of the two. That’s unlikely to change in the near future, but Dvalishvili’s humor, honesty and quirkiness are slowly starting to win over the MMA community.
Ahead of this weekend’s rematch, ESPN spoke to Dvalishvili’s friends, teammates and family members to uncover previously unheard stories that illustrate this classic Merab character. The results do not disappoint.
Growing up with Merab: ‘[He] didn’t know what fear was’
Unsurprisingly, Dvalishvili has had a near-death experience. Actually, he has had a few.
When he was 6, he nearly drowned in a river while he and his two older brothers were hiking in their native country of Georgia.
“Merab didn’t know what fear was,” Dvalishvili’s eldest brother, Misha, told ESPN. “Even as a child, he was impulsive, confident and loved to take risks. We were on a trip to the mountains and he dove straight into an icy mountain river, and it carried him away in an instant. Our other brother, Malkhaz, immediately recognized the danger and pulled him out. Had he been even a minute late, he might not have saved him.”
Dvalishvili’s eyes still widen when that story is told — in a sense verifying how serious the consequences could have been.
“They were saying the river was dangerous and I was like, ‘Ah, I don’t give a s—,'” Dvalishvili says. “There were some deeper areas where you can swim, but in the more shallow areas, it’s faster and the river stole me.” But even in the face of threat, Misha said his younger brother never panicked.
“From that day on, he continued to swim freely and fearlessly in the icy rivers of the mountains,” Misha said. “He hadn’t felt in danger at all. To him, it was natural: cold water, a powerful current and the thrill of movement. Where others saw danger, Merab saw freedom.”
That makes sense when you consider that several of Dvalishvili’s most viral clips have involved water. In addition to the frozen lake debacle, he dove off a cliff and tried to swim against the current while vacationing in Jamaica with his friends and teammates Aljamain Sterling and Al Iaquinta two summers ago. Eight months later, he posted a clip of himself swimming underwater the length of a Las Vegas pool, holding his breath for a full 30 seconds in the process.
IT DIDN’T TAKE long for Dvalishvili’s brothers to realize they couldn’t even play around with him in terms of issuing risky challenges. He’d accept a dare on the spot.
“We lived in the village when we were kids, and we had horses there,” Malkhaz said. “One day, I went to the market and brought back horseshoe nails. When I got home, Merab was playing in the yard. I left the nails near the entrance and jokingly said, ‘Let’s see how hard you can jump on these nails, Merab!’ and then I stepped away to grab something.
“Merab took me seriously. He ran and jumped right onto the nails. One of them pierced his foot and he was bleeding. I was terrified, but Merab was laughing and even said, ‘Don’t worry! Did I scare you?'”
IN 1999, WHEN Dvalishvili was 9, his family moved to Tbilisi, Georgia’s capital. They were living in a basement apartment, and Malkhaz was called upon to save his youngest brother’s life — for a second time before the age of 10.
“Merab had been playing outside with the other kids, and as he was running back into the house, he touched some exposed electrical wires,” said Dvalishvili’s father, Amiran. “The current struck him and he froze, clinging to the metal railing, unable to speak. Malkhaz kicked Merab with all of his strength to break the electric contact. If Malkhaz had been even a few seconds later, it could have been tragic. Merab’s palms were badly burned. It was a terrifying moment that I will never forget.”
Dvalishvili smiles and shrugs when he hears stories like this rehashed. He can’t help who he is. “My oldest brother is smart, you know?” he says. “My second brother is very kind, religious and just wants to give everybody love; [he’s] peaceful. I take risks. Eventually, I think I’m going to get married and have kids and then I will just be, uh, more smart. Stop doing crazy s—.”
Working with Merab: ‘I do record everything’
Several weeks before his first title fight against O’Malley at UFC 306 in September, Dvalishvili suffered a nasty cut over his left eye in practice. Any kind of cut during camp can put a fighter at a disadvantage. The worst ones can threaten to cancel a fight entirely, so they are typically treated with intense secrecy by a fighter and his camp. Dvalishvili posted his cut, which required stitches, to social media.
UFC CEO Dana White called Dvalishvili’s decision to post about the cut “next-level stupid.” “Our guys can’t f—ing wait to throw it up on social media [when something happens in camp],” White said. One week later, Dvalishvili posted a video of himself removing his stitches — with a pair of hand scissors.
“You ever see the scissors they take stitches out with?” White said. “This guy had f—ing bush shears you use to trim your f—ing bushes … I think he’s just f—ing with me now.”
Longo, who became Dvalishvili’s head coach in 2012 and now shares that role with Las Vegas-based Syndicate MMA trainer John Wood, said Dvalishvili has always been that way with filming and posting to social media. Same as the risk-taking, he can’t help it.
“He’s crazy with the camera and he’s been like that from day one,” Longo told ESPN. “He’s always filming everything. When he took out the stitches with those huge scissors, I told him, ‘You can’t be pissing Dana White off like this.’ And he just said, ‘Ray, this is nothing.’
“Every time we take a team picture in the gym, I just shoot the picture, you know? He’s got to make sure the angle is right, the lighting is good. He’s meticulous with the pictures. It’s nonstop. A lot of guys, that would be annoying, but he’s got so much joy doing it.”
DURING THE TRIP to Jamaica with Sterling, Dvalishvili got into a near-altercation with a tour guide and the local police over an accusation of nonpayment. At the height of the conflict, Sterling turned around and couldn’t believe what he saw.
“This guy from the [tour] group came back to us with a machete and everything. It was pretty intense — and then Merab started filming it all,” Sterling told ESPN. “He’s filming himself yelling at the guy and putting his camera in the guy’s face, and I’m like, ‘Brother, please don’t do that. We get shot by these guys right now, nobody is ever seeing that film.'”
Actively sharing his life on social media isn’t the worst thing for Dvalishvili, whose income does rely, partially, on growing his online fan base. But mostly, Dvalishvili says he enjoys making content, whether it’s taking down a “600-pound gorilla” in the gym, wearing a pillow shaped like O’Malley’s face in a baby carrier or standing way too close to the edge of every cliff, ledge and balcony he’s ever been on.
“In general, I do record everything,” he says. “In the beginning, I wasn’t posting to anyone because I just wanted to save it or it wasn’t interesting, but as people see now, I like editing videos to make them funny or interesting. I don’t mind making fun of myself, and if I see something interesting, I don’t only want to keep it to myself. I like to throw it out there if it’s positive energy or something we can all learn from.”
Living with Merab: ‘He has always stood up for the truth’
A little over a year ago, Dvalishvili was scheduled to corner his teammate and fellow Georgian Aleko Sagliani against Ahmad Hassanzada in a local MMA show in Las Vegas. The stakes were high, because the winner was expected to get an invitation to fight on “Dana White’s Contender Series.”
The fight played out at the Sahara Las Vegas, and Dvalishvili’s teammate came up short. Sagliani and Hassanzada went to the back to undergo routine postfight medical evaluation, and members of each team ended up in something of a holding area nearby. The buildup to the bout had been tense and each group was rather large. Dvalishvili congratulated the members of the other team and asked them to be respectful and not celebrate too much until everyone had gone their separate ways. Instead, the prefight tension boiled over when the two groups started to go back and forth.
“People start swinging on each other, and me and my other coaches are like, ‘Are we breaking this up or getting involved?'” said Wood. “We basically ended up doing a little bit of both. There were about 20 people involved. I didn’t even know who was who.
“Merab was in medicals with Aleko this whole time, and things were about to cool down — but then out of nowhere from behind the curtain, I see Merab just jump the rope and come sprinting in to tackle and start open-hand slapping this guy. After that, all hell broke loose.”
There have been multiple incidents caught on film in which Dvalishvili confronted UFC fans he perceived as disrespectful — to him or, especially, to his teammates. A month before his first meeting with O’Malley last year, Dvalishvili was filmed leaping over a barricade to confront a heckler. Three months later he had to be separated from a person in the front row of UFC 310 after Sterling lost a decision to Movsar Evloev.
One of the more difficult chapters of Dvalishvili’s career came when Sterling was champion of the men’s bantamweight division. The UFC expressed interest in having the two friends fight each other, and Dvalishvili refused to even entertain the idea. He stands by his principles and ignores the possibility of consequences when they are challenged. So, when Dvalishvili felt that Hassanzada’s team was disrespecting his teammate after a loss, he didn’t hesitate to act.
“One of my friends was begging them to just calm down and give us respect, and they were going on and on,” Dvalishvili says. “When I came out and still heard that, I was like, ‘Get the f— out of here.’ Once my teammates saw me, everybody was going. Even John Wood was walking around like a robot with his hands up, looking for someone to punch.”
AS A CHILD, Dvalishvili’s family said he never stood for anyone disrespecting anyone else, especially when it comes to kicking someone when they’re down. He was the youngest of three, but never turned to his older brothers for help in a conflict. His mother, Darejan, can recall an instance when he was 3, that he was playing with a small ax, chopping wood in the front yard, and took after an older child who was bullying his brother — ax still in hand.
That intolerance for intimidation followed Dvalishvili to the city.
“He has always stood up for the truth,” Malkhaz said. “In Tbilisi, he often had to fight in the streets over injustice or bullying. There was a time I saw him take on three boys at once. He was always independent in that. He never came to us, the older brothers, to get involved in that. And when they told him they wanted to fight his older brothers, that made him angrier.”
DESPITE BEING SOMEONE who would, and did, nonchalantly throw himself into a frozen lake, Dvalishvili holds a deep sense of responsibility. When something is entrusted to him, he takes that very seriously.
When he was 6, Dvalishvili’s family was invited to a birthday celebration in his village, and his mother decided to bake a cake. She had every ingredient she required, except for a stick of butter.
The closest market to Dvalishvili’s home was 7 miles away, and the rest of his family members were busy that morning. His mother handed him money and gave him basic instructions for how to bring back a stick of butter.
“They told me, ‘Merab, you’re a big man, you can do this,'” Dvalishvili says. “They said all I had to do was go to the transportation center, wait for the bus and then don’t get off until it makes its last stop. They said, ‘Buy the butter and then go back to the bus stop and just do the exact same thing. Don’t go nowhere else.'”
The first half of Dvalishvili’s journey went well. He made it to the market and purchased the butter, just as he had been told.
“He followed the instructions precisely,” Darejan said. “But for some reason, he didn’t put it in a bag. He just held the stick of butter in his hands, and it was a hot summer day.”
Dvalishvili had taken the task — and instructions — so seriously, he did not add the extra step of putting the butter in a bag. He was determined to do as he’d been told, and no one had said anything about any bag. He sat at that bus stop 7 miles from his home and agonizingly watched the butter melt between his fingers.
“I wanted to cry so bad, but I also wanted to be tough and, you know, not give up on my mission,” Dvalishvili says. “I wanted to be a big man, like they’d said. Once I did make it to my bus stop, though, I ran home and immediately started crying.”
Darejan holds so many memories of each of her sons close to her heart, but that day with the butter has always stood out. It’s one of the family’s favorite stories to tell.
Dvalishvili became the unofficial grocery shopper of the household and made many more trips to the market after that, because even though the first mission didn’t go as planned, everyone knew he’d never let it happen again.
“That moment with the butter has always stayed with me, seeing a child take responsibility for something so seriously,” Darejan said. “It might seem like a small thing, but for me, seeing Merab standing there with melted butter and tears in his eyes said more than words ever could. I hugged him and we both laughed a lot.”
As funny as it sounds, these stories about Dvalishvili tie in perfectly with the current story of his championship run. He has been underappreciated at times — and he has done some undeniably dumb stuff along the way — but in his own Merab way, he’s leaving his mark.