Merab Dvalishvili says MMA fighter owes him 50K 'I'm going to find him'
By Amy Kaplan
Merab Dvalishvili says an MMA fighter owes him $50,000 after he lost a bet.
Merab Dvalishvili was on fire during UFC Las Vegas media day on Wednesday. After taking aim at his upcoming opponent Petr Yan by calling him a "b***h" and "not a good human" he took aim at one of Yan's training partners for not paying up on a bet they made.
According to Dvalishvili, he and ONE Championship's Anatoliy Malykhin made a bet about the outcome of the rematch between Yan and Dvalishvili's teammate Aljamain Sterling. When Sterling defeated Yan for a second time, Dvalishvili asked Malykhin to pay up.
"I bet with [Yan's] friend $50,000," Dvalishvili said of the light heavyweight and heavyweight MMA fighter. "We make bet and all his country and all my country know about it and it was big deal."
Merab Dvalishvili says Anatoliy Malykhin owes him money after Aljamain Sterling beat Petr Yan
He says that he provided Malykhin with his banking info but nothing ever came through. Dvalishvili confronted him again, and he claimed that due to sanctions in the US, he couldn't make the transfer so Dvalishvili provided him with his Georgian bank account information, and still no money came through.
"He never sent me money," he said. "After he said he will fight in ONE FC and ONE FC will me directly, but they never send me."
Dvalishvili says a video that surfaced online between him and Yan was in regard to this bet.
"I was asking why his friend didn't pay me money, where is my money," Dvalishvili said. "[Yan] said 'I told Anatoliy don't pay Merab.' What kind of man he is? He's not a good man."
He says that once he fights Yan on Satruday, he'll check to see if the money came through, and if not, he'll go looking for it himself.
"I hope that Anatoliy is a man of his word and he's going to do the right thing and he's going to pay me," Dvalishvili continued. "If not, I'm going to Thailand and I'm going to find him."