Heading into the biggest fight of his career, Merab Dvalishvili is preparing for a high-stakes chess match in the main event of UFC 306.
Many will point to the grappling skills as the clear advantage that Dvalishvili has over the bantamweight champion, Sean O'Malley.
The issue is getting to "Suga" without taking significant damage requires a lot of patience and timing which means he can't afford to rush things.
This was stressed by both his long-time training partner and former O'Malley opponent Aljamain Sterling as well as his coach, John Wood, who is making sure that they're ready to fight across all ranges in case they need to.
John Wood Says That Merab Dvalishvili Won't Be Overzealous In Shooting For A Takedown
In a recent interview with The Scrap, Wood spoke about how he always prepares his fighters in this way even if they have a specialist skillset.
Being confident in all aspects of the fight means that Dvalishvili isn't going to solely rely on his grappling, which could lead to him rushing and making mistakes which O'Malley will be looking to punish him for with his counter-striking game.
There are things that we can see that we can capitalize on and obviously, it'd be a fool to think that they don't think or his coach Tim Welch wouldn't think, 'Oh hey, we're going out there to just dive in on his legs.' Of course they know that so we're not going to do that. We're not going to make it, 'Oh hey, here I am,' boom, run into something. That's just stupid.
The interviewer, Marcos Antelo, then made reference to Jorge Masvidal's record-breaking knockout of Ben Askren at UFC 239.
"Gamebred" secured the fastest finish in UFC history back in 2019 after he correctly predicted that Askren would dip his head for a takedown if Masvidal ran at him, lining him up perfectly for a flying knee.
Wood doubled down on the idea that they won't be rushing anything on Saturday night at the Sphere, and are preparing for a complete mixed martial arts contest.
Yeah that's just ridiculous, there's no way that's happening. There's no way we're getting KO'd in that kind of situation. There's no way like, are we gonna get hit? Sure. Is Sean gonna get taken down? Yes. It it gonna be a fight? Absolutely.