Merab Dvalishvili caused some concern ahead of his UFC 311 title defence against Umar Nurmagomedov in Inglewood, California on Saturday night when he showed off some gnarly (and fresh-looking) scars on his shin — but as he said following his unanimous decision victory, that certainly wasn’t the worst of it.

The Georgian fighter handed Nurmagomedov the first defeat of his professional career in the five-round early contender for ‘Fight of the Year’ as he dragged the Russian into deep waters and outpaced him for the latter three rounds of the 135-pound world title fight. But after facing the media late on Saturday night who informed him that Nurmagomedov was complaining that he injured his hand early in the fight, Dvalishvili said he had problems of his own in advance of the contest.

“I broke my back in training camp and it was some days I cannot get up from the bed,” he said to the media, including The Mac Life.

“I’m not making this excuse. You’re a f*cking fighter and you’ve got to find a way to win. It might happen, maybe, I don’t know, but after he disrespected me, he said so many bullshit things. I don’t know, as a fighter I respect him. God bless him, I wish him all the best, but it’s a fight, but guess what? Who broke his hand?

“In November, I got big cuts on my leg,” Dvalishvili added. “This just healed up Wednesday and closed, finally. It was big cuts, it was taking so long to heal up, and then it gets infected, and then every time somebody touch me and I was doing wrestling or kicking, it was so painful. That was a challenge for this training camp.”

“Then I had this fight and I’m laid down in my bed, I’m depressed, I cannot go gym,” he continued. “Umar Nurmagomedov is talking trash, ‘Merab will pull out. I won’t be surprised if Merab pull out.’ I’m like, ‘No! I’m not going to pull out.’ I never pull out.”