Aljamain Sterling thinks Merab Dvalishvili fought out of character in his title loss against Petr Yan.
After three title defenses, Dvalishvili (21-5 MMA, 14-3 UFC) lost the bantamweight championship to Yan at UFC 323 this past December. With Dvalishvili having won their first fight in March 2023 in dominant fashion, he was a sizable favorite to win the rematch.
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Dvalishvili was looking to notch a historic fourth title defense in the year just two months after retaining his belt against Cory Sandhagen at UFC 320. However, the strenuous schedule wound up taking a toll on Dvalishvili, and Sterling noticed it. He explained how Dvalishvili fought differently against Yan (20-5 MMA, 12-4 UFC) in their rematch.
“Now they’re 1-1 against each other,” Sterling told Home of Fight. “I think the adjustments that he has to make is getting back to being more like himself. That first fight or any of his other fights, Merab does a couple of different things: He circles a bit, gets the pacing, gets the timing, gets his feet settled underneath him, and then he starts to push the pace. When he fought Petr Yan the first time, within the first 10 or 15 seconds, he shot. This one, they exchanged jabs and one-twos for about three minutes on the feet. I don’t know why that was. That was one of the things Merab and I talked about. You’ve got to set the tempo and the pacing early like you did the first time. Don’t burn yourself out because I think he kind of got himself a little bit tired.
“One, because of all the weight cuts and the quick turnaround. Two months! Even faster than what I did for O’Malley. That’s absolutely insane. So, for him to do that, I felt like when he was in the clinch situations and he was trying to get the takedowns, Yan did a great job of defending. He was prepared, had great balance, a good base. I felt like we spent too much energy in those positions, and that’s why he was rubbing out his forearms. People thought it was because Yan was elbowing him, and people were making a big thing out of that. … He was like, ‘I feel like I used up a lot of energy in the clinch trying to get the takedown. He did a very good job of defending.'”
Dvalishvili stifled Yan in their first fight with a whopping 49 takedown attempts. Sterling wants Dvalishvili to spend less time on the feet with Yan if he gets the trilogy bout.
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“If he can make those small adjustments, strike when you need to strike, but remember what got us to the dance and remember what Petr Yan’s strong points are,” Sterling added. “He’s a great boxer, great timing, good defense, hard to hit cleanly. We’ve got to take the shots as they come. We can’t force it, and I think that’s what we did a little too much in that fight.
“But he still did some things relatively well, and if we get on his neck again, we’ve got to make sure we’re in a strong position and not doing it so early in the round where if he does get his head out, he ends up on top and he’s able to kill the round and land some damage on top. So, just fight IQ stuff. Small things to clean up, and I think he’s in a great spot to get the belt back.”
This article originally appeared on MMA Junkie: Aljamain Sterling explains how Merab Dvalishvili could beat Petr Yan
