Merab Dvalishvili shares gratitude for Dana White ahead of UFC 311: ‘He defended me’

Merab Dvalishvili believes he has a strong business relationship with UFC CEO Dana White.

Dvalishvili has been pushing himself as a company man as of late. White had previously expressed his gripes with the Georgian champion. The UFC boss wasn’t happy with Dvalishvili revealing he suffered a cut during sparring ahead of his UFC 306 title fight against Sean O’Malley.

White seemingly cooled off on his frustration after Dvalishvili poked fun at the situation by cutting his own stitches.

RELATED: MERAB DVALISHVILI TIPPED TO BECOME BANTAMWEIGHT GOAT BY COACH

Merab Dvalishvili Says Dana White Defended Him

During an interview with Mike Heck of MMAFighting.com, Merab Dvalishvili expressed gratitude to Dana White for sticking up for him when some fans believed he was afraid of fighting Umar Nurmagomedov at UFC 311.

“He defended me,” Dvalishvili told MMA Fighting. “Before the media always ask him like weird question about me, ‘How about Merab? [What] about him doing this?’ Why is media asking? They only do because Dana [can] answer in like a bad way, and that’s what he was doing. But this time, he defended me. The media again, ‘Merab is scared of Umar.’ Bro, Dana knows that I’m not scared. I always say yes every time they mention his name, I say yes, and Dana [says it’s] true.

“Yeah, so Umar’s friend tried to [provoke] me and then do something bad for me, and make me look bad. I’m a professional fighter. I love people. Usually when I walk through the crowd, I give everybody love, support, and I’m happy, you know. But this guy, he was recording me like this [with his phone out]I thought he was a friend and he was talking to me, and I go close to him. I was smiling. He was talking in Russian language and I know the bad words. We all know all the bad words, and then I wanted to fight the guy, but security jumped in. This guy provoked me.”

Dvalishvili claims he stepped up for the UFC when the promotion needed him for a January co-main event. He will be putting the UFC Bantamweight Championship at stake against Nurmagomedov on January 18th.