Roman Dolidze started his mixed martial arts late. ‘The Caucasian’, who comes from a grappling background and is a former winner of the ADCC Asia and Oceania, and the FILA World, started training MMA only eight years ago in 2016.

Since then, however, he has been prodigal, undefeated in his first six fights in the Ukrainian MMA circuit. That caught the attention of the world’s largest mixed martial arts promotion, the UFC. Since then, Dolidze joined the Dana White-led promotion in 2020 and has been a regular feature of the stacked and top-heavy middleweight division.

What is Roman Dolidze’s ethnicity and nationality?

Roman Dolidze was born in 1988 in the Caucuses mountains of the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic, which was a part of the USSR back then. Because he hails from Batumi, the port city in modern-day Georgia, Dolidze is a Georgian national.

The port city is one of the biggest, most bustling cities in all of Georgia, and was even briefly the home of the former Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, who was also Georgian. However, Dolidze no longer lives there and has moved to another country entirely.

Dolidze joins the other two Georgian UFC stars who have taken the promotion by storm, the featherweight champion Ilia Topuria, and the official number one bantamweight title contender Merab Dvalishvili. Dolidze used to be a football player as well and even served as a goalkeeper for three years.

While Dolidze hails from a Georgian port city, he fights out of the city of Odesa in Ukraine, a country he has virtually adopted and has great love for.

Dolidze’s history with Ukraine

Dolidze moved to Ukraine in 2008 and even opened an MMA gym in Odesa there. He even started his mixed martial arts journey in Ukraine, despite Georgia having a rich tradition of combat sports.

The Georgian moved to Ukraine when he was 20 intending to study shipbuilding and started training in the grappling martial arts of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and Combat Sambo, which eventually led him to win the ADCC and FILA BJJ championship.

Roman Dolidze closed his gym in Ukraine a few years ago to focus on his UFC career but still holds occasional seminars for the students who used to train under him. Speaking about the changes he saw in Ukraine after the war, the Georgian told BBC Sports in a recent interview that he was impressed by people’s resilience there despite the conflict.

What are your thoughts on Dolidze’s MMA journey?