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#4 UFC Bantamweight Division: John Dodson vs. Merab Dvalishvili

Former UFC title challenger John Dodson returned to form in February with his win over Nathaniel Wood

After going 0-2 in his first couple of UFC fights, Georgia’s Dvalishvili has reeled off four wins in a row. It’s no surprise then that he’s looking to make a step up here against clearly his toughest test to date.

At 35 years old, quite how much Dodson has left in the tank is anyone’s guess. It might be hard to believe, but he’s been in the UFC now for nearly a decade, debuting in December 2011 with a KO of TJ Dillashaw. Since then, it’s been an up-and-down career for him.

Essentially, ‘The Magician’ has always threatened to become a genuine title contender, if not a UFC champion at both 125lbs and 135lbs. However, he’s never quite gotten over the final hurdle. At Flyweight, that final hurdle was Demetrious Johnson, hardly a loss to be ashamed of. However, things have been slightly different at Bantamweight.

Dodson has never been finished in the UFC, but his style – low output, focusing on counters – has seen him come out on the wrong end of a lot of close decisions. Had he been slightly more aggressive, he would probably have beaten John Lineker and Marlon Moraes – and who knows what could’ve happened then.

More recently though, he hasn’t looked quite the same fighter as he did in his prime. His loss to Jimmie Rivera saw him fight in an extremely passive way, while Petr Yan was the first man to truly hurt him with strikes. He has bounced back since though, slowing the momentum of rising star Nathaniel Wood – picking up his first stoppage since 2016 in the process.

This fight is interesting for him because it’s the first time he’s been faced with a grappler rather than a striker since he fought Manny Gamburyan in 2016. Obviously, Gamburyan was knocked out in a matter of seconds – so realistically, you’ve got to go back to his first fight with Johnson to find an opponent who really looked to primarily grapple with him.

Can Dvalishvili find any kind of success, then? It’s very debatable. ‘The Machine’ is a fantastic grappler, of that there can be no doubt. He’s taken down basically every opponent he’s faced in the UFC, basically ragdolling the likes of Casey Kenney and Gustavo Lopez in recent fights.

However, Dodson’s takedown defense has always been one of his strengths. And given Dvalishvili hasn’t finished any of his UFC opponents, it’s simply hard to imagine a situation where he holds ‘The Magician’ down for a three-round decision.

Unless Dodson’s athleticism has fallen off a cliff, then – and the Wood fight suggested that’s not the case – I can definitely see him being able to stuff Dvalishvili’s takedowns, or simply bouncing to his feet if he is taken down.

And on the feet, given Dodson’s explosive speed and incredible power, this fight is probably a whitewash. I don’t think it’ll necessarily be easy for ‘The Magician’, but based on Dvalishvili’s aggression in his previous fights, he could play into Dodson’s hands. This one could get violent.

The Pick: Dodson via second-round KO