Dana White reacts to Merab Dvalishvili's fan altercation at UFC 310: 'He's my mini-Sean Strickland without the mouth'

12/08/2024 08:00 AM

Merab Dvalishvili is drawing comparisons to former UFC middleweight champion Sean Strickland but that's probably not a good thing.

On Saturday night at UFC 310, Dvalishvili got drawn into an altercation with a fan at the event as he walked backstage after cornering Aljamain Sterling in his fight against Movsar Evloev. Footage surfaced just after security intervened and pulled Dvalishvili away as he shouted at the fan, who then ended up throwing punches with another of Sterling's coaches.

UFC CEO Dana White didn't sound all that surprised after hearing about the incident because he's learned that Dvalishvili isn't opposed to going after anybody — including fans talking trash to him from the stands.

"He's my mini-[Sean] Strickland. Without the mouth," White said at the UFC 310 post-fight press conference. "What do you do? Let him buy the pay-per-view, I guess. I don't know. You can't keep fighting with f*cking fans. You can do it. It's going to cost you a lot of money. I don't know.

"I say it all the time. We're in the f*cking fight business. This happens. We've got to deal with it."

It's entirely possible the Nevada State Athletic Commission reviews footage from the altercation after previously fining and suspending Arman Tsarukyan after he got into a similar incident with fan during his walk to the cage at UFC 300 back in April. Because Dvalishvili was coaching Sterling on Saturday, he was licensed by the state as a cornerman so he does fall under the commission's jurisdiction if any potential punishment is handed down.

This is the second incident in just a few months after Dvalishvili also climbed up into the audience to confront a fan shouting at him during the Craig Jones Invitational in Las Vegas back in August.

White revealed that he actually had to keep an eye on Dvalishvili during the UFC 311 kickoff press conference on Friday when he started eyeing a fan talking smack to him from the crowd.

"Listen, Merab's that guy. He's that guy," White esaid. "This isn't his first altercation. I don't know if you guys noticed at the press conference yesterday, too, to the right somebody yelled something and he's in the middle of a conversation and he's trying to see who said that. Like what, you're going to run over there and you're going to fight this guy, too? It's just the way he is. He's build that way.

"I don't know if you saw, he wasn't sitting in the regular fighter section. I had to move him over, had to move the other two guys over at our table. We try to diffuse this stuff before it happens and tonight we had a good game plan. I didn't think he'd get into a fight walking out with Aljamain."

White actually blamed himself back in 2023 when he made the mistake sitting Strickland too close to future middleweight champion Dricus du Plessis when they were scheduled to fight. The bad blood between them erupted when Strickland literally jumped over his seat to attack du Plessis with fans, fighters and their families surrounding them.

To avoid a similar situation on Saturday, White made sure to put Dvalishvili in one section and his next opponent Umar Nurmagomedov in a completely different part of the arena but even that didn't stop an altercation from erupting at UFC 310.

White doesn't chalk any of this up to Dvalishvili playing mind games with his opponent or attempting to get into trouble so he doesn't actually have to fight Nurmagomedov when they're scheduled to meet at UFC 311 in Los Angeles on Jan. 18.

Instead, White says that's just how all fighters seem to be built — Dvalishvili included.

"Merab's fighting people in the f*cking stands. Merab would get in a fight in the middle of the fighter section," White said. "That's why we moved him over to the left. So I wouldn't say that any of these guys are afraid of anybody or any fight. But fighters are a paranoid bunch.

"There's always some conspiracy against them. Whether it's us or other people. We make fights people want to see. They win or lose the fights on their own but they are conspiracy theorists. They always think that somebody is against them and maybe that's what they need to do to have that mental thing to go out and do what they do."