Merab Dvalishvili and Sean O’Malley are preparing for their bantamweight championship rematch but the combativeness between the two also seems to extend to their respective coaches. Dvalishvili looks to make his sophomore championship defense against the man he claimed it from in O’Malley as the two are set to headline UFC 316 on June 7. In the lead up to this matchup in Newark, Merab’s Trainer has offered up his thoughts on Sean O’Malley’s coach having a history of uttering cage-side calls pretending to be the coach of O’Malley’s opponents so as to lure them into bad positions to benefit his charge.
Merab Dvalishvili’s head coach John Wood recently spoke with MMA Fighting to discuss the upcoming sequel clash against Sean O’Malley and thoughts on if O’Malley’s coach Tim Welch utilizes some of his polarizing coaching practices again, Wood said,
“Of course we’ll have that talk. Of course, that, you know, it will be brought up and I think Tim [Welch] will do it again. But I mean, feel free to talk to Merab all you want. Like, it just gave him more motivation, you know? So, I’m good. Tell Merab what you want him to do and he’ll, you know, he’ll go ahead and do it. It didn’t work. It’s not going to work again.”
“I think Tim’s a good coach. I like Tim personally. I don’t take any offense to it. Do I think it’s stupid? Absolutely… But, you know, if I guess that maybe they think that it worked for the Aljo fight, so it’s something we’re going to, you know, keep on doing, then go ahead. But we’ll talk to the referees about it, but I don’t think it’s going to be a problem in any way, shape, or form.”
Wood continued, “There’s a lot of people that have had successful careers and cheated a lot. I’m not saying that Tim’s cheating, you know, it’s maybe bending the rules… But, you know, the referees always tell you in the back, ‘This is your first hard warning. If you do it once, I’m taking a point.’ No one ever takes a point. You gotta basically rip somebody’s eyeball out or kick their nuts off to even get a point.”
Sean O’Malley works with multiple former UFC champions ahead of UFC 316
Sean O’Malley has been getting in work with some elite mixed martial artists ahead of this opportunity to become a two-time champion. Former multi-time middleweight champion Israel Adesanya generated some headlines when footage of him working with ‘Suga’ popped up online. Also, O’Malley was seen training with the man who holds the UFC record for most consecutive title defenses, Demetrious Johnson. The former UFC flyweight champion imparted to O’Malley in that training interaction that Johnson could still compete at the highest levels of the sport today if he chose to.
This work will be key as Sean O’Malley looks to ascend to the mountain top once again as he battles Merab Dvalishvili in less than two weeks’ time in New Jersey.
