Days after Merab Dvalishvili finally landed Sean O’Malley as his next opponent, he got together with the bantamweight champ for a photoshoot to begin promoting UFC 306.
The card taking place at the Sphere in Las Vegas has been teased as the most expensive event in UFC history, so it stands to reason why the promotion is going to put a lot of marketing muscle into making UFC 306 the biggest and best show possible. Part of the photoshoot involved Dvalishvili coming face-to-face with O’Malley for a staredown, but the two rivals barely got within a foot of each other before the trash talk started.
UFC eventually released a clip showing Dvalishvili arguing with O’Malley while a stunned Alexa Grasso watched in the background, but it turns out cameras didn’t get rolling soon enough to catch everything.
“We were just doing a faceoff,” Dvalishvili told MMA Fighting. “They wanted us to face off without conversation. But of course, once I saw Sean, he was making fun of me. He was joking, ‘Welcome to the big show,’ and he said, ‘Oh, have you ever been in the main event?’ He was [talking to] me with sarcasm.
“I said, ‘Yes, of course, I’ve been in the main event before. Remember when I beat the shit out of Petr Yan?’ He didn’t like that. He [said], ‘Welcome to the big show. I’ve been here.’”
The war of words eventually led to Dvalishvili taking aim at O’Malley’s head coach Tim Welch, who injected himself into the rivalry after getting into a spat with former UFC bantamweight champion Aljamain Sterling on social media. The initial incident erupted after video captured during O’Malley’s title fight win showed Welch shouting instructions at Sterling from the side of the cage.
Sterling then accused Welch of talking so much trash from the corner that the referee had to tell him to stay quiet.
The back-and-forth saw Dvalishvili promise to slap Welch when they finally run into each other, and that only amplified the bad blood between the two camps.
Dvalishvili says what UFC captured on film was his confrontation with O’Malley over Welch, which was after the trash talk between them had already began. As much as Dvalishvili wants to beat O’Malley and take his title at UFC 306, he promises his biggest issue lies with Welch more than anybody else.
“I have a problem with his coach, Tim,” Dvalishvili said. “He was very disrespectful to me and he was doing stupid [stuff] 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. 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, even now he some fans said some stupid things. Nothing is real. He’s making up some stories about me, which is not true. He deserves [me] 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.”
After Dvalishvili vowed to settle things with Welch when they run into each other, O’Malley amped up his chatter by telling Dvalishvili that Welch would welcome that fight, especially with a significant size advantage on his side.
That’s when Dvalishvili reminded O’Malley that he wasn’t trying to lure Welch into the cage to meet him in the UFC.
“He said, ‘Oh, you should fight him.’ Bro, I’m talking a street fight,” Dvalishvili said. “You think I’m going to go in the cage and I’m going to have a referee and I’m going to have rules there? I’m talking about when I see him, I’m going to smack his face. [O’Malley] said, ‘He’s bigger than you, that’s why we have weight classes.’ I don’t give a shit. I’m talking about man to man. I’m very pissed off. He deserves [me] to smack his face.
“He’s not a real coach. He’s not a real man. That’s what I’m talking about. He’s not a fighter. I’m not going to go in the cage with him. He’s never going to be in the UFC or in my weight class especially. I’m not going to do jiu-jitsu rounds with him. I’m talking about a street fight. That’s all I was trying [to say], but then Sean O’Malley was acting stupid [saying] there’s weight classes. This guy is so stupid. What are you talking about? Where did you grow up? Who raised you? Who are you? What the f*ck are you talking about?”
As irate as he was in the moment, Dvalishvili says he never intended for the situation with O’Malley to turn so volatile, but he’s not going to back down from a challenge — even one coming from his opponent’s head coach.
“I don’t like drama,” Dvalishvili said. “I’m a professional fighter and I’m going to focus on this fight. If I see Tim somewhere, of course I’m going to smack his face. That’s all. That was it. That’s what I told Sean O’Malley.
“Tim deserves to get smacked, for sure. But me and Sean O’Malley, we’re going to fight in the cage with the rules, UFC octagon, and we’re going to fight for the UFC belt. That’s done. I’m not going to talk to Tim because he don’t deserve to have a conversation. 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].”
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