Islam Makhachev has reached the highest of two UFC mountains together with his Dagestani wrestling.
After vacating the lightweight throne to pursue two-division glory, Makhachev dominantly beat Jack Della Maddalena within the fundamental event of UFC 322 on November 15.
The result was never in query throughout the headlining contest at Madison Square Garden, because the Russian standout accrued over 18 minutes of control time en path to shutouts on all three scorecards.
Many praised Makhachev’s welterweight title win, but not everyone was satisfied with how the 34-year-old achieved his goal of becoming the most recent double champion on MMA’s biggest stage.
Some have accused the newly crowned king at 170 kilos of being “boring,” and one UFC legend thinks Makhachev could change that by taking a leaf out of Merab Dvalishvili’s book…
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Is Merab Dvalishvili the best bantamweight of all time?
Dominick Cruz tells Islam Makhachev to adopt Merab Dvalishvili’s style
Each Makhachev and Khamzat Chimaev have been criticized for his or her control-heavy path to UFC title wins in recent months.
It’s been a unique story for Dvalishvili, with the bantamweight champion putting on a relentless pace and landing an abundance of powerful takedowns throughout his dominant performances to provide even probably the most anti-grappling fans some enjoyment.
Speaking on The Bohnfire podcast, 135-pound legend Dominick Cruz suggested that Makhachev could learn something from Dvalishvili on the subject of accomplishing each dominance and entertainment contained in the cage.
“I used to be at all times focused on attempting to make it as exciting to observe concurrently winning. Mixing two things together. Merab has found a solution to do this together with his grappling style greater than Makhachev has,” Cruz said.
“For those who watch Merab’s form of grappling, his is sort of a takedown rally. … His style is exciting. He’s letting you up and also you don’t even understand it. … Whenever you’re uninterested in happening and up, now he’s on top of you beating you up. In-between that, he lands loads of big punches too. He’s mixing within the striking with these takedown attempts.
“I personally like watching a takedown artist greater than a man who rides any individual out in top position,” he continued. “Makhachev, he’s the guy that rides you out. He gets one takedown and also you don’t rise up again. He just burns the clock. Whenever you watch Merab, he’s doing something like that nevertheless it is crazier to observe, fun to observe.
“While he’s staying protected, while he’s grappling, he’s also on his feet showing you an assortment of various takedowns and an assortment of various punch entrances to establish the takedowns. That’s cool to observe for me, and it’s a unique wrinkle on the grappling than you see from Makhachev. Once I watch Merab, he’s using more tools. … It makes it slightly bit more interesting to observe.
“The important thing for Makhachev to make it more exciting, for the fans to be more pulled in…they wanna see damage and more stuff. That may be the subsequent progression for Makhachev — determine learn how to stay that heavy on top while creating damage at the identical time.”
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Merab Dvalishvili is chasing the identical record as Islam Makhachev
Dvalishvili and Makhachev have been two of probably the most dominant fighters on the UFC roster lately, and their success has brought them each to inside touching distance of a serious accolade.
Together with his victory over Della Maddalena, the Dagestani prolonged his winning streak to 16, leaving him tied with Anderson Silva for the longest in UFC history.
While Makhachev is only one win away from breaking that long-standing record, ‘The Machine’ shouldn’t be far behind and might move extremely close with a victory over Petr Yan at UFC 323.
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After Dvalishvili defeated Cory Sandhagen at UFC 320, the Georgian’s winning run stands at 14 straight fights, leaving him just a pair away from the joint leaders.
Just like the welterweight king, Dvalishvili recently addressed the prospect of breaking Silva’s record.
“Yeah, in fact (I take into consideration breaking the record for consecutive wins),” he told Stake.
“Actually, once I look now how close I’m, because I actually have a 14-fight win streak after which God willing if the whole lot will likely be good and if I fight healthy and I win the fight, I could possibly be number two with my winning streak after which just two more and I can beat the opposite one.
“But, , that’s in fact, that’s something that I search for, but that is simple to say, it’s hard to do. But that’s why I work so hard to maintain continuing this great journey and to place one other good record in my résumé.”