Aljamain Sterling says UFC 323 was an uncharacteristic performance by Merab Dvalishvili.
Dvalishvili (21-5 MMA, 14-3 UFC) lost his bantamweight title to Petr Yan (20-5 MMA, 12-4 UFC) by unanimous decision in Saturday’s headliner at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. “The Machine” went just 2-for-29 in his takedown attempts and took some visible damage on the feet.
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Sterling believes something was off about Dvalishvili, and his performance showed it.
“I guess we were kind of wondering if Merab was seeing something different,” Sterling told Submission Radio. “Because those body punches, he’s almost put me down a couple of times with those. Just the weeks leading up to this fight and even the day of and in the back room, I would say he didn’t at all go to the body with his hands like he normally does. We really feel like that could have probably been a difference maker, kind of like in the first fight when Yan kept attacking the calf and then Merab started kicking his leg back, and eventually he hurt him and had him forced to switch to the southpaw stance. This time Yan was a lot more comfortable in the southpaw stance because we has having a lot more success with that left body kick.
“Yeah, just a couple of technical things we were doing wrong. I think once we look at it and evaluate it together, we’ll all see the same thing, be able to make those adjustments relatively quick, and do some fight simulations. I find it hard to believe that version of Merab was the best version. In the back room and even in the morning shakeout, it was just different. A lot of the things he was doing before throughout camp, the new things that he was showing that he was picking up on, and the fight’s the fight. Sometimes you don’t do some of the things that you’re programmed to do. We’ve just got to give ‘The Machine’ a little bit of a reboot.”
Sterling initially thought the fight could have been scored three rounds to two for either fighter but admits he has to rewatch the fight. He thought the damage on Dvalishvili’s face wasn’t a full indication of how the fight went and wanted him to attack the body more – something that Yan ended up doing with great success.
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“Even for an off day, I didn’t think he looked that bad,” Sterling said of Dvalishvili. “Obviously the bleeding never looks good. His nose has been crooked for – everyone knows that. So once he got hit there, it split back open, and then the cut over the eyebrow split back open. It’s a lot of cosmetic stuff. There’s nothing he’s going to be able to do about that right now. He’s still at the peak of his fighting career, so just have to roll with the punches, and we’re just going to have to do a better job of landing more.
“Because he was being very active in the beginning, then kind of slowed down after the first takedown attempt, and I feel like he maybe used too much energy. But there were some moments where Yan looked tired, and we wanted him to put the gas on him a little bit and start to go to those body shots, which we know would have been – he’s put guys down with them. So, he’s got bricks for hands. It’s unfortunate, but it’s what Merab was seeing and feeling in there.”
This article originally appeared on MMA Junkie: UFC 323: Merab Dvalishvili’s loss left Aljamain Sterling in disbelief
