The UFC have provided some clarity on what went down during the somewhat bizarre fight between Sean O’Malley and Merab Dvalishvili.
O’Malley and Dvalishvili threw down during a bantamweight title fight at UFC 306 last year which the Georgian won by unanimous decision to become the new 135lbs king.
However, the contest was marred by a series of strange incidents in Rounds 1 and 2.
Just moments after the first bell rang, referee Herb Dean called a temporary halt to proceedings after Dvalishvili began screaming at O’Malley’s head coach Tim Welch, who was sat cageside.
Dean apparently had to warn Dvalishvili about comments he made to O’Malley’s corner in the opening seconds.
He also told Welch that the opposing coach is not allowed to yell out the opponent’s name during the fights, with new footage revealing exactly what went down.
Footage shows Welch shouting instructions to Merab in an attempt to confuse him during the opening stanza.
Welch appears to put on a different voice and accent, adding to the confusion in the hopes of tipping the fight in O’Malley’s favor.
“Merabie, you might need to be patient, bud!” Welch can be heard saying.
Footage shows Merab going berserk at Welch’s antics, yelling at him which causes Dean to pause the fight.
“Merab, don’t start this!,” Dean tells Dvalishvili.
“Do not talk to him. That’s my job.”
The camera then switches to former 135lbs champion Aljamain Sterling, who is sat in Merab’s corner.
“Herb, he’s talking to him!” Aljo yells. “He’s talking to him, Herb!”
“Do your job, I’ll do mine,” Dean responds.
Speaking to the media post-fight, new champion Dvalishvili explained the situation, saying that he had warned Welch to keep quiet during the bout — with Dean also warning Welch regarding comments he had made in the bout’s opening seconds.
“I was in and I’m fighting, I’m a professional fighter, I’m focused,” Dvalishvili said of the strange incident.
“It never happened to me. I never pay attention to the other corner, but Tim’s voice, it was very familiar because he was doing the same thing [with Sterling]. He was doing the same thing, he was doing very disrespectful, ‘Merab, you’ve got to go,’ he was talking sh*t at me.
“I tell him, ‘Stop it,’ and nobody was telling him to stop. He just kept doing this. If you do the same thing in basketball or soccer, they will disqualify you, but I guess here not. But I told the referee, ‘I’m sorry.’ I’m a professional, that’s my job, but I said, ‘I’m sorry’ and after I guess he stopped it. After, I don’t care.”
“That really caught me off guard,” Welch said on O’Malley’s YouTube channel afterwards.
“Literally, we sat down, I was really calm, I said, ‘You got to be patient, Merab. You got to be patient, Merab.’ Then he starts bucking around, almost having a seizure.”
“So I didn’t realize there was a rule that if you have a callout, it can’t be the other guy’s name,” Welch explained. “I told Herb that some of our callouts have Merab’s name in it, and he’s like, ‘Nope, nope, nope.’ Didn’t know that. Would love to see that f****** rule.”
However, that wasn’t the only weird incident in the bout.
At the end of the second round, Dvalishvili began kissing the top part of O’Malley’s back.
Dean began yelling at Dvalishvili, which led the then-top contender to head back to his corner.
O’Malley then stood up and punched Dvalishvili before the horn sounded to end the round, confusing everyone in attendance, including the commentary team.
“I don’t know why the ref stopped the fight,” O’Malley said. “Then he was kissing me. I don’t know, there was like two to three seconds left on the time, looking back on it I’m surprised that I even knew that, and then the ref was like, ‘Hey, quit kissing him on the back,’ so he got up thinking the time was up, and then I juiced him once. I was hoping I’d put him out.
“But Aljo got up like he was about to f****** storm the cage, like I f****** hit him illegally. I don’t think he even realized there was time on the clock. The ref didn’t stand you up, he said to quit f****** doing that.”
‘Sugar’ refused to accept the result of the fight in the immediate aftermath, insisting he won.
He has already expressed a desire to get the bantamweight gold back, but for now Dvalishvili has other matters to attend to.
Merab makes the first defense of his strap and will aim for his 12th straight victory when he takes on the unbeaten Umar Nurmagomedov (18-0) in the co-main event of UFC 311: Makhachev vs Tsarukyan 2 on January 18.
Umar is the older brother of Bellator champion Usman Nurmagomedov and the cousin of undefeated former UFC Lightweight Champion Khabib Nurmagomedov.
The 29-year-old has previously competed in the Eagle Fighting Championship (EFC) and Professional Fighters League (PFL).
There’s certainly no love lost between Dvalishvili and Nurmagomedov, who had a backstage confrontation back in December in the build-up to their upcoming fight.
They were filmed verbally attacking one another and had to be separated by security after getting in each other’s faces, providing some excellent hype to an already eagerly-anticipated contest.
