UFC Bantamweight Champion Sean O'Malley has seemingly made a mental note of the cut Merab Dvalishvili suffered in training.
O'Malley will put his gold on the line in the main event of Noche UFC/UFC 306 next weekend, topping the lineup alongside Dvalishvili for the promotion's second Mexican Independence Day celebration.
Their bout marks the main attraction of the highly anticipated event at the Sphere in Las Vegas. But the lead-up to the card was briefly struck by cancellation fears after Dvalishvili posted a cut from camp on social media a few weeks out.
While the Georgian challenger insists his title shot was never in jeopardy and has since returned to usual training, that didn't stop UFC CEO Dana White from publicly slamming "The Machine."
The whole world knows about Merab’s cut. He posted it. Our guys are so dumb, it’s next-level unbelievable,” White said during a DWCS press conference. “All the stuff I talk about boxing, what I will give boxing, is when something happens in a camp, man, let me tell you what, it does not leak. Our guys can’t f*cking wait to throw it up on social media.
It’s a small cut. It’s no big deal. But obviously, it needed to be posted,” White continued. “Why the f*ck would you want him to know that? It is next-level stupid. Some of these guys are so stupid it’s mind-boggling. It’s unbelievable.
And we can seemingly count O'Malley among those who agree with White's take...
O'Malley Puts Dvalishvili's Cut In His Crosshairs
During a recent interview with Kevin Iole, O'Malley looked ahead to his sophomore bantamweight title defense, touching on one of the main topics that has arisen in the latter part of the Noche UFC build-up.
Many suggested Dvalishvili made a mistake by publicly displaying a cut for his opponent to target, and "Sugar" backed that up by insisting he will reopen the blemish at some point in the PPV main event on Sept. 14.
I am 100 percent going to open up that cut, whether it's healed or not," O'Malley said. "I don't know how much it can heal. I've never really had any bad cuts, so I'm not sure. But that's the left side of his face. This right hand doesn't miss.
I'll probably accidentally hit his nose before I hit that cut. That nose just kinda takes up like 85 percent of his face, so I'm gonna try to get around his face and get to that cut," O'Malley continued. "Dana referring to him as one of the — I don't remember what he said, one of the stupidest people or beyond stupid. Whatever he said was pretty accurate. I mean, the dude's just not that smart of a guy.
O'Malley will look to inflict that damage, as well as much more, en route to breaking Dvalishvili's lengthy winning run, both stalling the Georgian's title ambitions and retaining his place on the bantamweight throne in the process.
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