Merab Dvalishvili Doesn’t Want to Fight ‘Greatest’ Alexander Volkanovski

Merab
Dvalishvili respects Alexander
Volkanovski too much to fight him.

Dvalishvili (19-4) is currently looking for fresh contenders to
defend his bantamweight title against. Former featherweight champ
Volkanovski (26-4) is not a name that excites “The Machine.” While
Dvalishvili claims he isn’t ducking the matchup, he respects “The
Great” too much to want to fight him. The Georgian also mentioned a
callout from flyweight champ Alexandre
Pantoja.

“I love Alex Volkanovski man, he is one of the greatest,”
Dvalishvili told Manouk Akopyan. “And I just really respect him.
It’s nothing like I don’t want to take a risk or it’s not that I’m
scared or something. But just have so much respect. Just don’t want
to fight Alex Volkanovski. Let’s see what’s going to happen in the
future. Even Pantoja called me out, let’s see how everything plays
out.”

Dvalishvili won the title with a dominant decision win over
Sean
O’Malley at UFC 306 last year and has since defended it with
another decision win over Umar
Nurmagomedov at UFC 311 this past January.

Meanwhile, Volkanovski has dropped three of his last four,
including two failed lightweight title bids against Islam
Makhachev. The Australian lost his featherweight title to
Ilia
Topuria via a brutal knockout at UFC 298 last year. However,
Topuria recently announced a move up to lightweight, leaving the
featherweight title vacant. Volkanovski is now set to compete for
the vacant title against Diego Lopes
(26-6) at
UFC 314 on April 12 at Kaseya Center in Miami.