[autotag]Merab Dvalishvili[/autotag] takes issue with [autotag]Tim Welch[/autotag]’s comments ahead of his fight vs. [autotag]Sean O’Malley[/autotag].
Dvalishvili (17-4 MMA, 10-2 UFC) challenges bantamweight champion O’Malley (17-1 MMA, 10-1 UFC) Sept. 14 in the UFC 306 main event at Sphere in Las Vegas. O’Malley’s head coach Welch has given Dvalishvili his flowers in terms of skillset, but predicted a first-round knockout for “The Suga Show.”
Dvalishvili is not happy with Welch’s words – including a video that recently surfaced where Welch impersonated Aljamain Sterling’s corner, urging him that he has to go in his title fight vs. O’Malley at UFC 292. Seconds later, Sterling lunged in and was knocked out by O’Malley.
“I have a problem with his coach, Tim,” Dvalishvili told MMA Fighting. “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. Only the UFC you can 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 people does this. Even now he’s talking on his podcast, like making fun of my height, making fun of my nose, even now some fans send some stupid things. Nothing is real. 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.”
In a recent interview with Submission Radio, Welch warned Dvalishvili of the consequences if he decides to step up to him during fight week.
“Initially, I thought it was because I said we’re going to target his nose in an interview, which isn’t a lie,” Welch said. “I mean, it’s not a lie, and I’ve never really said fighting words to those guys. But then Merab tweeted out and said, ‘Next time I see you, I’m going to take care of it’ or something. And it’s like, come on brother, I haven’t trained martial arts my whole life for a little 5 foot 4 guy to try to punk me out. I’ve trained my whole life, and I’m only 34 years old. I’m 6 foot, 195 pounds. It’s like, alright, alright, we’ll see what happens. But that’s besides the point. This is a huge fight that we’ve got the No. 1 contender vs. the champion of the world.
“That fight is going to happen, 100 percent. ‘Sugar Show’ vs. Merab, and we’re preparing and we’re more dialed in than we’ve ever been because Merab does pose a serious, serious threat. … It’s probably not smart for Merab to do that fight week. Maybe after the fight. You’ve got the biggest fight of your life and you’ve got the opportunity to get a world championship. So fight week stepping into my face is probably not smart. You’ve 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 what happens. If they think our team is going to cower down to their team like (Henry) Cejudo’s team did, then they’re going to be wrong.”
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For more on the card, visit MMA Junkie’s event hub for UFC 306.