Dvalishvili is coming into UFC 306 with a bigger beef against Sean O’Malley’s coach than he does with O’Malley himself.
Merab Dvalishvili has been parading around on social media with a Sean O’Malley lookalike for months, but it seems like Sean, not Merab, who has the edge on mental warfare going into their UFC 306 fight at the Sphere on September 14th.
As annoying as O’Malley can be, it’s the bantamweight champion’s coach Tim Welch that has Dvalishvili’s attention. Their feud kicked off after video surfaced of Welsh pretending to be Aljamain Sterling’s corner during his fight with O’Malley. Moments after Welch yelled ‘Aljo, you gotta go,’ “Funkmaster” took an awkward lunge that got him countered and knocked out.
“I have a problem with his coach Tim,” Dvalishvili told MMA Fighting’s Damon Martin. “He was very disrespectful to me and he was doing stupid and not respectful things. Any real coach should never do that, whatever he was doing. Try do the same thing in basketball or let’s try to do the same thing in a football game. They will give you a disqualification.”
This is a 10000 IQ play from Suga’s coach @TimwelchMT pic.twitter.com/Nx93kmiCOV
— Spinnin Backfist (@SpinninBackfist) May 8, 2024
“Only the UFC can you get out of this. Coach your guy, coach your fighter. Don’t be disrespectful to the opponent. What kind of people does this? Only a snake person does this.”
“Even now he’s talking on his podcast, like making fun of my height, making fun of my nose,” Dvalishvili continued. “He’s making up some stories about me which is not true. He deserves to smack his face. That’s what I told Sean O’Malley. ‘Hey Sean, tell your coach to shut his mouth,’ because I was so pissed when I saw all these videos, how he does stupid things, how he talks stupid. I told him to shut his mouth.”
Merab has said there’ll be trouble if he sees O’Malley’s coach on fight week.
“I’m not going to talk to Tim because he don’t deserve to have a conversation,” he said. “He deserves only a smack in his face. He already talks too much. He already disrespected me, he already disrespected my team, he already disrespected MMA. He deserves to get [smacked].”
Tim Welch explains he’s dialled in on Sean’s prep for #UFC306 but sends warning to Merab if he’s got plans to try and “punk” him out during fight week! ??
: https://t.co/nDfFoFQ5Ww pic.twitter.com/GN5ES0Mut9
— Submission Radio (@SubmissionRadio) August 5, 2024
Welch addressed Dvalishvili’s threats in an interview with Submission Radio earlier this week.
“It’s probably not smart for Merab to do that fight week. Maybe after the fight,” he suggested. “You got the biggest fight of your life and the opportunity to get a world championship. So fight week, stepping into my face is probably not smart. You got a fight ahead of you that you’re going to get paid for. So taking on me is not very smart.”
“But we’ll see what happens. If they think our team is going to cower down to their team like Cejudo’s team did, then they’re going to be wrong. They’re wrong about that.”
Dana White may want to hire a bit of extra security on fight week because the last thing he needs is a main event-canceling brawl between Team Suga and Team Merab.