Dominick Cruz believes Sean O’Malley will have a stylistic advantage against his next bantamweight title challenger, Merab Dvalishvili.
The inevitable clash between ‘Sugar’ and ‘The Machine’ does not have an official date, but all signs point toward the two going toe-to-toe in either September at Sphere in Las Vegas or in The Crossroads of the West when the UFC heads back to Salt Lake City in October.
But no matter where their 135-pound title tilt goes down, ‘The Dominator’ believes O’Malley’s size and standup game will be more valuable than the wrestle-heavy attack of Dvalishbili.
“O’Malley has the advantage,” Cruz said on the Anik & Florian Podcast. “You saw Henry [Cejudo] was able to kind of hurt Dvalishvili a little bit and force the wrestling. So, O’Malley’s going to hit him. We’re all going to get hit. If you’re going in there expecting, ‘I’m not going to get hit once. I’m just going to finish him in a minute…’ You could, yeah, but it’s quite an expectation for yourself, so I expect he’s going to get hit.”
“The question is how is he gonna close the distance? That’s why this is a good fight for O’Malley, is the distance and the stance switches and the footwork. Stylistically, you got a short guy who wants to wrestle and we know for a fact doesn’t want to stand up. It’s not what he wants to do. It’s not where he’s comfortable, so the fight starts standing. That’s where I see it’s a good stylistic matchup for O’Malley” (h/t SI.com).
Will Merab Dvalishvili stand and trade with Sean O’Malley?
Though wrestling is undoubtedly Dvalishvili’s best path to winning a world title, the Georgian boldly claimed that he would stand and trade with O’Malley. Of course, Michael Bisping quickly called bullsh*t on that, but only time will tell if ‘The Machine’ is willing to risk it all to prove a point against one of the most intriguing strikers in the game today.
In 10 career victories under the UFC banner, Dvalishvili only has one finish to his credit — a second-round TKO against Marlon Moraes in 2021.
