Sean O’Malley lost a clearcut decision to Merab Dvalishvili.
Like so many opponents before him, “Suga” had no answer for “The Machine’s” punishing takedown attack, getting dragged to the floor six times during their UFC 306 headliner at The Sphere last weekend in Las Vegas.
UFC CEO Dana White claimed O’Malley “looked flat” at the UFC 306 presser.
“Literally everybody reached out to me that night and said Sean O’Malley didn’t look like himself,” White added at Tuesday night’s “Contender Series” media scrum. “He didn’t look explosive, he didn’t look, you know, all the same stuff we were all saying that night. Not to take anything from Merab, but I mean everybody felt that way.”
Well, not everybody.
“I know people are trying to say that O’Malley looked flat, I think that’s the narrative that Dana was trying to push,” Dvalishvili’s friend and training partner, Aljamain Sterling, said on YouTube (transcribed by MMA Junkie). “If I’m being fair, if you look at his fights, his track record of all the guys he’s beaten, they were all punching bags for the most part. … I give credit where due. He was well prepared, but to say he looked flat makes no sense.”
“The opening bell when he’s coming out with those feints, those hip twitches that he does so well where he’s shaking off to the side, shaking off to the other side and then looking for those long strikes, he came out exactly like Conor McGregor did against Khabib (Nurmagomedov),” Sterling continued. “Now I gave Merab that same exact look, coming out with the fingers, long, trying to hit the feints and trying to go to the body, trying to go up top.”
O’Malley admits he “over-promised and under-delivered.”
“Merab finally got his fair shake, he got a fair fight, although O’Malley probably knew about the Sphere fight before Merab did and had more time to prepare,” Sterling said. “When they announced it for Merab from what I remember, they called him, it was exactly eight weeks. Now come on, once again we’re trying to put this ball in the court where he (Merab) has to now scramble around like, ‘Okay, I’m fighting here. I’ve got to get all these training partners, make sure everything is dialed in.”
Sterling was stopped by O’Malley at UFC 292 last summer in Boston and played a significant role in Dvalishvili’s preparations for UFC 306. Critics have since downplayed O’Malley’s brief title reign, suggesting his victory over “Funk Master” was simply a “fluke.”
For more UFC 306 news and notes click here.