It has been four years since bantamweight Zviad Lazishvili last had a competitive MMA fight due to a myriad of reasons, but he’s finally making his return at LFA 79 on Friday in Colorado.
Originally Lazishvili took time off following his last bout in June of 2015 to heal injuries, but then a series of events transpired that ended up extending his layoff for over four years.
“My last fight was in 2015 one of the reasons (for my time off) were my injuries,” Lazishvili told MMAWeekly.com. “I took care of them and moved to Russia and signed there with Strela Promotion, which is one of the best team there.
“Unfortunately I had four fights scheduled which were canceled in last days of a tournament then I got another injury which took long time to recover. After that I decided to continue my education and moved to US and decided to return to fight and follow my dream.”
In the time since he last fought, Lazishvili feels that while he’s similar stylistically to before, he’s added to that foundation and should be a much improved fighter when he returns.
“I would say my style is similar but my skills and knowledge has grown a lot,” said Lazishvili. “Back in my country (of Georgia) MMA is not developed that much and back in that times we used to train in small gym with couple of fighters without coach and we were learning things from YouTube and training each other.
“After I left my country and moved to Moscow things were changed. Finally I had amazing circumstances for training and improving myself but unfortunately I could not perform and test my new skills.”
Lazishvili (11-0) will finally return to action when he faces Josh Huber (24-10) in the 135-pound co-main event of LFA 79 on Friday in Broomfield, Colo., just outside of Denver.
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“Josh is very experienced and tough fighter,” Lazishvili said. “He is patient and dangerous, but everybody has holes and I am going to use those holes against him. I don’t like to predict how fight will go but I will do everything to defeat him and get my win.”
Now that he’s settled in the United States and has opportunity to take his careers to new highs, Lazishvili is looking to take advantage of the situation and take things as far as he can in 2020.
“I waited so long for this and I am very excited to fight in this organization,” said Lazishvili. “I know for a fact that LFA is one of the biggest platforms for transitioning to the UFC and I am sure that one day I will get there.
“I don’t have any (specific) plans for now but definitely I want to fight as many fights as I can. Most likely I will stay with LFA until I get my chance to fight in UFC.”