Merab Dvalishvili, UFC 284 recap w/ guest co-host Sayif Saud

UFC Unfiltered with Jim Norton and Matt Serra

On today’s episode of UFC Unfiltered, Jim and Matt are joined by two friends of the show in bantamweight contender Merab Dvalishvili and guest co-host Sayif Saud to talk all things UFC 284.

Merab tells the guys about where he stands in training camp with a little less than a month until his upcoming fight against Petr Yan. Having already seen what Yan looked like against fellow Serra-Longo fighter Aljamain Sterling in a pair of bantamweight championship fights, Matt explains why he thinks Merab is an even tougher stylistic matchup for Yan than Sterling was.

The topic then shifts to the all-time classic battle in the UFC 284 main event featuring featherweight champion Alexander Volkanovski and lightweight champion Islam Makhachev. As Jim sings the praises of City Kickboxing’s risk-taking champions, Sayif explains why the UFC’s pound-for-pound number 1 and 2 fighters can confidently feel like they raised their stock on Saturday night.

Sayif mixes in some talk about Ciryl Gane’s matchup against Jon Jones at UFC 285 before wrapping up the show with why he thinks his fighter Brandon Moreno’s dreams of defending his flyweight championship in Mexico City against rival Alexandre Pantoja would make for an electric co-main event to Alexander Volkanovski vs. Mexico’s Yair Rodríguez following Yair’s interim featherweight title win on Saturday night against Josh Emmett.