Aljamain Sterling and Merab Dvalishvili are not just teammates and training partners, but also very close friends. And that is why it was not surprsing to see ‘Aljo’ jump in to defend his bantamweight champion friend against charges he is trying to ‘duck’ #1 ranked Umar Nurmagomedov.

But the Dagestani was having none of it, pointing out that Dvalishvili has declared he is ready to rematch Sean O’Malley in November, just two months after their first, UFC 306 fight, but not him. To which Sterling felt this was because Nurmagomedov was a much harder stylistic matchup than ‘Suga’ and thus ‘The Machine’ needed more time to prepare.

“It’s a completely different style of fight. If he had to choose his ideal return he would rather more time to recover and prepare properly like most champs do. You guys will share the octagon one day,” Sterling tweeted.

The Dagestani, however, was not convinced, and chalked up Sterling’s protests as being a “cheap excuse”.

And it is easy to see why The Machine is s so willing to rematch O’Malley so soon. The former champ who is a pure striker, after all, was no match for Dvalishvili’s world-class wrestling. And ‘Thr Machine’ undoubtedly fancies he can repeat that performance against the former champ yet again. Which raises a serious question- is the champ indeed scared to fight Nurmagomedov as the Dagestani seems to think?

Merab Davlishvili doesn’t think Umar Nurmagomedov deserves his #1 ranking

The reason Merab Dvalaishvili gives for not wanting to fight Umar is simple- he doesnt think the Dagestani deserves to be where he is in the division. Umar, of course, is the cousin of Khabib Nurmagomedov, who remains one of the biggest stars in the history of the sport. And Merab feels it is precisely because of this that the #2 ranked bantamweight was given special treatment by the UFC, essentially fast-forwarding his rise.

And that does seem to be somewhat true. After all, Umar leapfrogged the entire top ten of his division and was given a fight against then #2 ranked Cory Sandhagen earlier this year when the Dagestani was ranked #9 in the division!

But to be fair to Umar, he did defeat Sandhagen and thus earned his place in the division. And while there is a possibility that the Georgian champ feels Umar is a much tougher matchup than O’Malley, saying he is scared to fight the Dagestani is taking things a bit too far. What do you think about Umar and Aljamain Sterling’s back-and-forth on Twitter?