UFC bantamweight champion Sean O’Malley and the next challenger for the belt Merab Dvalishvili crossed paths during a video shoot to promote UFC 306 at The Sphere in Las Vegas recently, and it wasn’t long before they started arguing.
Dvalishvili appears to have approached O’Malley to complain about the champion’s coach Tim Welch, saying he wanted to “smack his face.”
“If you have a problem with him, you can take it up with him,” O’Malley told his rival. “He’ll fight you. If that’s what you want. After the fight you should definitely try to smack his face. You should definitely try that. That would be funny. You should try that.”
Dvalishvili stressed that he didn’t want to fight Welch in the UFC, but rather on the street.
“You could street fight him. I’d love to see that,” O’Malley said. “You want to die? Is that what you’re saying? He’ll kill you.”
The 34-year-old Welch is a former welterweight MMA fighter with a 14-6 career record who retired in 2017 due to recurring injuries and has since gone on to make a name for himself as O’Malley’s coach and podcast co-host.
It’s not clear exactly what the source of Merab’s frustration here was, but it may have something to do with the fact that Welch was accused of talking trash to Dvalishvili’s teammate Aljamain Sterling during his title fight with O’Malley last year.
Check out the video of the altercation between Dvalishvili and O’Malley below, including a funny cameo from UFC 306 co-main event star Alexa Grasso.
<blockquote class=”twitter-tweet” data-media-max-width=”560″><p lang=”en” dir=”ltr”>Tensions are already high <br><br>[ <a href=”https://twitter.com/RiyadhSeason?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>@RiyadhSeason</a> <a href=”https://twitter.com/hashtag/NocheUFC?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>#NocheUFC</a> LIVE on PPV from <a href=”https://twitter.com/SphereVegas?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>@SphereVegas</a> ] <a href=”https://t.co/8Rk8FDRudK”>pic.twitter.com/8Rk8FDRudK</a></p>— UFC (@ufc) <a href=”https://twitter.com/ufc/status/1818377858009776610?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>July 30, 2024</a></blockquote> <script async src=”https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js” charset=”utf-8″></script>
