"Daddy?" - Henry Cejudo makes eye-opening claims about Merab Dvalishvili's bantamweight GOAT status following UFC 311
Merab Dvalishvili's potential status as the best bantamweight in mixed martial arts history was recently addressed by a former opponent of his. This assessment was done by Henry Cejudo, who spoke with his Pound 4 Pound podcast co-host Kamaru Usman in the wake of UFC 311.
At the promotion's first pay-per-view of the calendar year, Dvalishvili made the opening defense of his bantamweight belt in the night's co-main event. 'The Machine' retained his belt against Umar Nurmagomedov, handing the Dagestan native his first pro MMA loss by way of a unanimous decision.
When asked by Usman if he had anything else to say about this development at bantamweight and if Dvalishvili can be considered the best 135-pound champion of all time, Cejudo said:
"Daddy? Does that make you happy, Kamaru? [laughs]... The GOAT? Oh ok, I see what you said. Yeah, yeah, you have to, man. [Petr] Yan, [Sean] O'Malley, [Henry] Cejudo, Umar [Nurmagomedov], [Marlon] Moraes, [Jose] Aldo. I mean he's fought everybody, dude.
"He's fought everybody, he's beat everybody in this division in; f**k, you could say in their prime, dude. You just can, man. Merab is the bantamweight GOAT, man. At least in my eyes. I mean he only has one title defense, but the amount of people who he has beaten is great, man. Great top five resume, dude. Maybe in UFC period right now, dude."
Check out Henry Cejudo's characterization of Merab Dvalishvili as the bantamweight GOAT at the 20:16 mark below:
Merab Dvalishvili's injuries heading into UFC 311
Merab Dvalishvili almost did not make it to the cage for this weekend's hugely impressive title defense because of serious setbacks he was dealing with pre-UFC 311.
Syndicate MMA's John Wood, who coaches Dvalishvili, recently offered some insights into the situation whe speaking to Submission Radio. Wood discussed the extent of the injury and infection that his charge was dealing with leading into the Saturday night that just passed.
The 34-year-old was dealing with a back injury and a serious case of staph infection in his leg that, according to Wood was so bad that it left Merab Dvalishvili unable to walk for an entire week.
ufc-308-i-care-him" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-is-sponsored="false">The native of Georgia apparently had his entire shin filled with staph infection, with Wood having concerns about if the champion would even be medically cleared to make it into the octagon.
With Arman Tsarukyan pulling out of his UFC 311 fight versus Islam Makhachev from a back injury, it would have been quite the blow for the organziation if both of their title fights were to have been scrapped by back injury-related issues during the eleventh hour.