There was a bizarre moment in the first round of Merab Dvalishvili’s bantamweight title challenge against Sean O’Malley at UFC 306 on Saturday night when ‘The Machine’ started shouting at his rival’s coach, Tim Welch, and now we know the full story why that occurred.
It had already been known heading into the fight that Dvalishvili had bad blood with Welch due to the star being angered that the coach had tried playing mind-games with his friend and teammate Aljamain Sterling during his title fight with O’Malley last year by shouting instructions to him from cage-side.
And so when Welch tried to do the same thing to Dvalishvili on Saturday night, he responded angrily.
“First round (he) comes out, and what I said to Merab was, ‘Merab, you need to be patient.’ And that’s when he freaked out,” Welch said on his YouTube channel. “He started bucking himself around. I was like, ‘Holy cow, I just said Merab, be patient.’ He must’ve been anticipating that a little bit, but I really wasn’t going out of my way to [makes noises] yell. But I did say that.”
Dvalishvili also gave his side of the story on social media.
“Everyone is asking what happened at start of fight – I was trying to stay professional and focus on the fight only, not wanting to change the energy of the fight,” Dvalishvili wrote on X. “I made no eye contact with O’Malleys team. BUT when the fight started I hear his team calling out to me – Merab.. trying to coach , provoke and distract me. I yelled back at them cut it out and coach your own guy. I remembered they pulled the same crap with Aljo. Not professional .. this is the way they want their Fighter to win. It’s a shame how disrespectful they are and that they have zero sportsmanship!”
Dvalishvili was then warned by referee Herb Dean to focus on the fight, and Dean went on to also warn Welch that he’d be punished if he continued with his verbal antics.
“I guess there is an excessive coaching (rule), but I told Herb Dean some of our callouts have Merab’s name in it, and he said, ‘Nope, nope, nope.’ So, that ended,” Welch said.
While Welch claims to be surprised at the way Dvalishvili reacted to the situation, it’s clear he was playing mind games on the night, but even he admits that in the end it wasn’t enough to alter the outcome of the fight, which Dvalishvili won by unanimous decision to become the new bantamweight champion.
“I was surprised at how much he freaked out,” Welch said. “He let his emotions freaking get to him in there, but it didn’t do anything. Didn’t matter one bit. Like I said, we knew how good that guy was.”
