Merab Dvalishvili and Marlon Moraes are running it back on Nov. 14 at Etihad Arena in Abu Dhabi. No gloves this time. It’s a wrestling match on Real American Freestyle’s first card in the Middle East, which the promotion announced Wednesday, as first reported by MMA Fighting and Sherdog.
Sherdog’s X account marked the occasion with a wrestling emoji and the line “From the Octagon to the mat.” At least the emoji came attached to an actual announcement.
The first meeting was at UFC 266 in September 2021. Moraes gave Dvalishvili an early scare, and Dvalishvili came back to knock him out in the second round. That win was a stop on the way to a title. Dvalishvili won the UFC bantamweight belt in 2024, defended it three straight times, and then lost it to Petr Yan at UFC 323.
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The trilogy with Yan was three weeks ago at UFC 333, and it went to Yan again by unanimous decision. Dvalishvili took the first two rounds and threw a record-breaking number of takedown attempts. Yan figured out his timing over the final three rounds, wobbled him in the fifth and took a 2-1 lead in the series. MMA Junkie named it its Fight of the Month for October. Dvalishvili sits at 21-5 overall (14-3 UFC) and is still No. 1 in the UFC’s bantamweight rankings behind Yan, who called out Song Yadong afterward with this gem through an interpreter: “Give me Song Yadong, give me King Kong! Give me anybody! Just make the weight, and I will take you down.”
So Dvalishvili, coming off a five-round war, is booking a wrestling match for the middle of November. Of course he is.
This will be his fourth RAF appearance. He beat former UFC champions Frankie Edgar and Henry Cejudo in his first two, then lost the Cejudo rematch this past August. Put that next to the Yan result and he’s lost two straight outings across two sports.
Moraes makes his RAF debut. The former World Series of Fighting champion spent years as a UFC bantamweight contender, retired from MMA in 2023, and came back in August with a unanimous decision win over Maximiliano Perez at a regional show in Sao Paulo, Brazil.
The card around them is loaded. Khamzat Chimaev and Colby Covington headline, and Arman Tsarukyan meets Neiman Gracie in the co-main.
My take: Moraes’s best moment against Dvalishvili came on the feet, and RAF just took his hands away. He’s walking into his first wrestling match against a guy whose cardio and takedown volume broke records in a UFC title fight last month. Moraes deserves credit for saying yes. I’d still want the scoring explained to me slowly if he wins it.
