Merab Dvalishvili's current UFC run is so flawless it's making us wonder if the judges…

Come on now, don’t start blaming rogue AI scorecards before we even count the takedowns.

nah mate 😤 split over Petr “The Murderface” Yan?? our lad MERAB toyed him round after round! remember that flying knee in R2? pure poetry 💪 judges just pressed buttons on a spreadsheet like Kev said — robots in three-piece suits can’t take the heat from a brawler this clean 🔥

Heads up here—everyone keeps banging on about that flying knee in round two, right? That move alone should’ve been Exhibit A in the Merab brawl highlight reel, but let’s call it what it was: a microcosm of the entire fight. You’re telling me Petr Yan, a guy who’s dropped Mike Grundy clean six months prior, stood still in that pocket like a mannequin for three minutes while Merab waltzed around him? Round after round, Yan had to eat those low kicks, eat the pace, eat the double-leg chains that pinned him to the fence like wet wallpaper. And you think the judges still couldn’t spot the pattern unless they had an Ethernet cable plugged straight into their occipital lobe? Look, I’m not saying the judges are androids tuned to 430 Hz when Merab walks in—though after that Yan card I’d be forgiven for borrowing a tinfoil hat from the local Argos—but you don’t land thirty-plus significant strikes across five rounds, you don’t out-grapple a former bantamweight champ who earned his black belt in the Russian sambo garden, and you still end up on the wrong side of a split without some very creative maths. The scorecards read like the output of a malfunctioning photocopier set on “mirror image.” Half the panel must’ve flunked Show-Me-Your-Work 101, because the Merab ledger was already stacking up before that flying knee even kissed the canvas.

you know what, lads? this isn’t even the first time merab had to listen to his own referee’s scorecard over the air instead of the judges. back in the day, the cage was still wild, the cards were wilder, and half the time you needed a lucky charm just to make sure they could count past twelve. remember henry cejudo vs dominick cruz in 2016? man was robbed live on air, wasn’t he? judges gave it to cruz—old-school grappler favourite—then cejudo went and took his belt anyway in the rematch. same blueprint, different chapter. sometimes the robots aren’t even programmed; they’re just born with a soft spot for the slick dancer who slips through the cracks while everyone else is still swatting at flies. it’s like watching a man try to explain the offside rule to a barrister from newcastle—clear as mud, but the ref’s already called it anyway. merab’s latest run just shines that mirror up to every fight where the judges forgot to bring their glasses. seen worse, yeah. but this? this feels like the sport finally caught up and realised the judges were the ones who needed a five-round timeout.

Anyone ever notice how Merab’s calf kicks don’t just win the round—they win the decade? That flying knee in R2 wasn’t just a highlight, it was the exclamation mark on five rounds of Yan looking like a man auditioning for a role as a punching bag while Merab waltzed through him like a conductor leading a symphony he composed himself.

Wait till you see the card they buried him under in DC. I was ringside for that Yan fight—stand right behind the Comcast NBC press pod—and the Yan corner’s own cutman came up to me mid-fight and said, “Merab’s calf kicks have stripped Yan’s hamstrings like he’s peeling an orange.” Not once did Yan land a power shot; he kept throwing jabs off one leg because the other screamed every time it hit the deck. So when the judge in my section scribbled a 10-9 after that flying knee, I nodded—because Merab had already tallied 32 leg kicks inside two minutes alone in round one and Yan’s bladed stance turned into a wince every third step. Yet two of the three judges somehow saw zero damage until the highlight reel started looping in the press room. That’s not robot programming, that’s a cortex that short-circuited on Yan’s name when the first period ended.

Petr Yan’s legs after that scrap looked like he’d been sent out by a firing squad with wooden stilts—37 calf kicks planted clean and Merab made it a full-contact leg day every round. The judges’ scorecards weren’t split, they were stratospheric—two of the three must’ve watched the fight on a 10-second delay loop because the real carnage was happening live at ringside where the Yan corner’s cutman was practically taping up a hamstring like it was half-peeled.

Come on now 😂 Yan had ONE good left hand in that fight and suddenly the whole card’s about some "clean" wrestling? Merab ate that shot like it was nothing—then went straight back to cooking him for 14 more minutes! Judges saw what? A guy tapping his own shoulder like a mime?! 37 calf kicks my arse, Yan looked like he’d stepped into a woodchipper! 🤬

You can’t swing a leg-kick by the cape in this room without hitting three Merab flags—so let’s leave the judging clown car in the garage and just admit something straight: the Yan card read like a letter written in invisible ink where half the alphabet pages were missing.