Merab Dvalishvili to wrestle Marlon Moraes in RAF Abu Dhabi rematch on Nov. 14

Merab Dvalishvili will wrestle Marlon Moraes at Real American Freestyle's Abu Dhabi card on Saturday, Nov. 14, at Etihad Arena. RAF named Moraes as his opponent in a post on X on Wednesday, Sherdog reported. The promotion had added Dvalishvili to the card on Tuesday with the opponent still to come, according to MiddleEasy.

This is a wrestling match, not an MMA fight. RAF is billing it as a catchweight crossover bout with no title at stake, MiddleEasy reports, and no weight limit has been published. It will be Dvalishvili's fourth RAF match and Moraes's first.

"I'm excited to return to Abu Dhabi and compete at RAF's first event in the Middle East," Dvalishvili said in a statement on Wednesday. The statement, carried by Arab News and The National, went on:

I love wrestling, I love competing, and I'm ready for whoever is standing across from me.

Moraes hasn't commented publicly on the match.

The first meeting

They fought at UFC 266 in Las Vegas on Sept. 25, 2021. Moraes badly hurt Dvalishvili with a left hook and follow-up in the first round. He survived, took Moraes down and stopped him with ground strikes at 4:25 of the second.

The betting had moved hard toward Dvalishvili before that fight. The line opened at −110 on both sides, and he closed at −275, a 69% chance, according to our fight page.

Where they stand now

Dvalishvili is 35 and has lost two straight to Petr Yan, who took his bantamweight title by decision at UFC 323 last December. Yan then won their trilogy 48-47 on all three cards at UFC 333 in Abu Dhabi on Oct. 24, per AgentMMA. Dvalishvili closed at +125 that night, a 43% chance, as our fight page shows.

Before the Yan losses, he won the belt from Sean O'Malley in September 2024 and defended it three times. Backing him at the closing price in every priced UFC fight since 2020 would have returned +5.99 units over 12 fights, per his page. He won 10 of them where the prices implied about seven. That's past performance at closing prices, not a forecast.

His RAF record is 2-1. He beat Frankie Edgar 12-1 on May 30 and came back from 8-0 down to beat Henry Cejudo 11-8 on July 11. Cejudo won their rematch on Aug. 22 with a takedown and a pin 36 seconds in, Heavy reported. "That's wrestling. If we go 10 times, we will have 10 different results," Dvalishvili said afterwards.

He has said he wants a third match with Cejudo, though none has been booked, according to MiddleEasy.

Moraes, 38, is a former World Series of Fighting bantamweight champion. He challenged Cejudo for the UFC title in June 2019 and lost by third-round TKO. He beat José Aldo at UFC 245 that December. He then lost his next four UFC fights, all by KO or TKO, as his page shows, with Dvalishvili the third of them.

He retired in 2023, according to AgentMMA, and joined the Coral Springs Police Department in Florida in 2024, MMA Junkie reports. He returned on Aug. 28 at Liga Monstro Combate 2 in São Paulo. He beat Maximiliano Perez by unanimous decision there, his first win in nearly seven years, according to MMA Sucka.

The card

Khamzat Chimaev challenges champion Colby Covington for RAF's cruiserweight crossover title in the main event, with Arman Tsarukyan vs. Neiman Gracie as the co-main. The card starts at 8 p.m. Gulf Standard Time and streams on Fox Nation in the U.S., per MiddleEasy. RAF wrestling is outside our odds coverage, so we have no price on this match.

What we think

We think Dvalishvili should be a clear favourite. With no strikes allowed, the left hook that hurt him in 2021 is gone, and wrestling is what his UFC run was built on. The Cejudo pin is the reason not to call it safe: he has already lost an RAF match inside a minute.