John Wood downplays bantamweight champion Merab Dvalishvili’s toe injury ahead of his UFC 316 title defense.
Dvalishvili (19-4 MMA, 12-2 UFC), who runs things back with Sean O’Malley (18-2 MMA, 10-2 UFC) in the June 7 main event from Prudential Center in Newark, N.J., shared a video on Instagram Stories (h/t @vato.gv) showing off a bruised and swollen pinky toe, which raised speculation that it may be broken.
While Dvalishvili’s head coach Wood thinks it’s likely broken, he remains unconcerned.
“He loves to rile everybody up,” Wood told Submission Radio. “The thing is, as much as people think, ‘Oh, that’s stupid’ or this or that, he would never post something that was going to take him out of a fight. So guys, if he’s posting something, it’s really not that bad, and it’s not going to bother him that bad.
“I’m sure he broke his toe, but you don’t understand. Every camp and every fighter, even O’Malley says it: Everybody is banged up. There’s a level of injuries you go into fights with. That’s the way it is. That’s the way it’s going to be, and that’s the way it always is. It’s just one of those things that obviously, Merab likes to post about a little more than everybody else. It’s all right, though. He’s all good.”
Dvalishvili is no stranger to showing off his pre-fight struggles. Around three weeks prior to his first fight with O’Malley at UFC 306, Dvalishvili suffered a cut which required multiple stitches, resulting in UFC CEO Dana White calling him “next-level stupid.”
“That’s nothing compared to some of the things we’ve had going into a lot of the fights,” Wood said. “You’ve heard a lot about how he was banged up for Umar (Nurmagomedov), but there’s a lot of things he doesn’t talk about. He’s had some massive injuries going into some massive fights before, and been banged up. Broken ribs and backs, and things that are just completely out of whack, but that’s just the way it goes. He’s going go show up and do his job no matter what.”
