Aljamain Sterling says Merab Dvalishvili has Nate Diaz-like issue that made UFC 323 loss look worse

Merab Dvalishvili did not exit the cage unscathed at UFC 323.

The final UFC pay-per-view of the year marked the last hurrah for Dvalishvili’s bantamweight title reign, as he fell short of a fourth successful defense in 2025.

After getting past Umar Nurmagomedov, Sean O’Malley, and Cory Sandhagen, Dvalishvili was beaten by Petr Yan in their main event rematch in Las Vegas.

The Russian did what many thought was impossible by outpointing ‘The Machine’ across five rounds. During that 25 minutes, Dvalishvili was beaten bloody by Yan, and his teammate thinks that was past damage catching up to the now-former champ.

Aljamain Sterling says scar tissue made Merab Dvalishvili’s UFC 323 damage look worse

The bantamweight legend showed off his willingness to strike in the UFC 323 main event, trading blows with Yan to close out the promotion’s PPV era with a memorable main event.

Dvalishvili came out on the worst side of most exchanges on the feet, evidenced by the damage he was left sporting after five rounds at T-Mobile Arena.

Reacting to the result during an interview with Submission Radio, Dvalishvili’s teammate and cornerman, fellow ex-champ Aljamain Sterling, suggested that accumulation of scar tissue was to blame for the amount of blood.

“Really good fight, great scrap. It was back and forth,” Sterling said.

“He’s not too banged up outside of like — no serious injuries, you know? Everything is basically cosmetic. He has a lot of scar tissue in his face.

“People were kind of seeing all the blood and counting that a little bit more,” he continued. “It reminds me of the Diaz brothers, right? Whenever they got cracked good, it just split open. That’s kind of something like what he (Dvalishvili) was dealing with.

“Yan did some good stuff, we can’t take nothing away from him. … The bleeding never looks good. His nose has been crooked, everyone knows that. So once he got hit there, it split right back open, and then the cut over the eyebrow split right back open.

“It’s just a lot of cosmetic stuff, and there’s nothing he’s gonna be able to do about that right now.”

That issue has notably plagued Nate Diaz in the latter portion of his career, with the Stockton native frequently getting opened up in the same spots.