UFC Vegas 109: It's now or never for Roman Dolidze, Saturday's underdog who's 37 years young

Yahoo

3 days ago

It's not that Reinier de Ridder received the red-carpet treatment to the top five of the UFC's middleweight division, but he achieved that high standing in just four UFC fights. There was of course an escalation in play; the Bo Nickal victory demystified a lot of hype, while de Ridder's hard-fought win over former champion Robert Whittaker at the end of July hoisted him up into elite company.
Yet when a guy like Roman Dolidze sees de Ridder soar over him in the standings, it tends to peeve. Dolidze has had a dozen UFC fights, and he's won nine of them. Ten if you include 2023's first Marvin Vettori fight, which Dolidze swears he won. And don't forget Nassourdine Imavov needed the judges to squint in his favor to give him the majority decision over Dolidze in early 2024, too.
That was a close fight.
The truth is, nobody has dominated Dolidze, but he has dominated plenty. So why is he sitting at No. 9 while guys like De Ridder are cushioned nearer to the top?
'Because I'm not talking, I'm not the second coming of Conor McGregor,' he says in Georgian-accented English. 'I'm just fighting, winning fights, and it's all. Some guys get an easier way. Some guys just [have to be] fighting for their way. For me, if you are winning, you will push them to give you title fight.
'It is just a matter of time. A little bit longer maybe, but we definitely deserve to be high rank.'
This weekend Dolidze is headlining his third main event of his career at UFC Vegas 109, taking on Anthony 'Fluffy' Hernandez, who himself is ranked only at No. 10 despite a seven-fight win streak. This confrontation arrives on relative tiptoe, because a week later middleweight champion Dricus du Plessis will defend his title against Khamzat Chimaev at UFC 319 in Chicago.
And, once again, Dolidze's main event will take place at the UFC APEX, which in 2025 has become MMA's equivalent to performing off-Broadway. Not that Dolidze, who enters Saturday as a nearly 3-to-1 betting underdog at BetMGM, necessarily sees it that way.
'I've fought pay-per-view, I fought Fight Nights in big arenas, I fought Fight Nights in the APEX — I fought many events, a lot of different [venues] in my career, but it's never [had an] effect on me,' Dolidze says. 'It's just fight for me. I don't need nobody to push me to go there and perform better or something, no matter what it's happening. I'm fighting for my country, I'm fighting for my family, I'm fighting for the future of my kids, and that's why it doesn't do nothing for me.'
If this sounds short, it's not. In fact, all of this is being said in the most good-natured way possible. Dolidze is a super-nice person, with an upstanding life outside of the cage. He owns a grocery store, the Green Wood Market, not far from the shoreline of the Black Sea at his home in Batumi. He is a businessman, a family man, and a respected member of the community, all of which he holds in high regard.
In other words, he's in direct contrast with the bombast of the fight game. It's perhaps one of the reasons why Dolidze's road to the top is that much harder than, say, a Sean Strickland, who — despite losing two of three — is still locked at No. 2 in the UFC's middleweight rankings. When you ask Dolidze about trash-talking, he smiles through his glorious beard.
'First of all, I was raised as a man, and after that as a fighter, so when I behave with other fighters, I behave as a man first of all, not as a fighter,' he says. 'That's why I don't know another life. This is how I was raised and this is normal for me, and if somebody is acting wild or do something funny, it's just because who they are. But if I will do the same, I'll be just on [their] level. That's why I'm trying to be away from it.'
He can maintain this equilibrium even when he's going against Fluffy Hernandez, who'll exhaust the asterisk symbol on your keyboard when transcribing. (He once told me, 'My uncle has beat my a** plenty of times, because he's told me to do some s*** and I would be like, 'F*** you, you're not my dad,' and I'd get a pipe and try to hit him … I wasn't the sweetest f***ing kid, you know?')
By comparison, Dolidze carries a G-rating. He's a Pixar film going up against "Pulp Fiction."
'Oh, I don't know,' he says. 'Because [Hernandez] didn't say nothing wrong I think yet.'
If there's an asterisk that Dolidze himself carries it might be in the age column. He turned 37 years old last month, which means his time to strike is now.
'Don't forget, I started in MMA very late,' he cautions when asked if we should be phrasing his age as 37 years young. 'I'm learning day by day, from fight to fight, finding something new. I feel much better than before and it's not my limit. When people get older, some feel they're getting worse in something, yet with me it's the opposite — I'm getting better in certain grappling, I'm still growing better cardio, better striking, using better grappling for MMA, so it's completely different.'
Still, it's a big fight with interesting timing. Dolidze is a sizable underdog because Hernandez is six years younger and just now coming into his prime. A loss here could jettison Dolidze from the rankings altogether, while a win gets him in the vicinity of where he hopes to be — that is, a fight away from a title shot.
That's an important detail when "DDP" and Chimaev will do an encore act a week later, in one of the biggest fights of the summer. To be in the conversation, Dolidze needs to let his fists do the talking on Saturday.
'It's an interesting fight stylistically, and I almost pick nobody because I think it's very much 50-50,' Dolidze says of UFC 319's main event. 'We all know that Khamzat can win and take down anybody in first round or maybe in a second, but we also know that after second round, Khamzat can't fight. He can easily win in beginning of first round, but he can also easily lose after second round, and Dricus is a very durable and strong fighter, very well rounded. It's very 50-50.'
There's a sparkle in Dolidze's eye when talking about his old friend, Chimaev, who has been in his crosshairs for a long while. There's a part of him, he admits, that wants Chimaev to win the title and keep rolling until he can get to him, perhaps at some point in 2026.
It's a dangling carrot, but Dolidze wants to be the one who derails the boogeyman of the middleweight ranks. He's wanted to do that for a long time, which is why he called Chimaev out in June 2024 at UFC 303 after beating Anthony Smith.
'Because he's a really good athlete,' Dolidze says of Chimaev. 'I know him also outside of fighting, he's a good guy. Sometimes when you call out somebody, people think that you are against that person, or you don't like the person. It's not like this for me. It's just fighting, it's work. We are fighting for money. You open your eyes and see the truth. What are we doing? People try to create drama out of nowhere.
'For me, he's a good fighter. No matter what I'm doing with my life, I'm always trying to be best in the thing. And if you are not fighting the best fighters — you can be champion in a group of foxes, but there are also lions and tigers, and if you are not a king there, it doesn't do nothing.
'I want to fight him because I consider him as one of the best fighters. That's all.'