Sean O'Malley's coach compares fight camp for Merab Dvalishvili to Aljamain Sterling: “No wrestling at all, zero”
Sean O'Malley is in the final stage of his preparation for the upcoming bantamweight title fight against Merab Dvalishvili. The pair are set to headline Noche UFC 306, a historic card that will take place at the Sphere in Las Vegas.
It will be the second defense on O'Malley's title, which he won after knocking out Aljamain Sterling at UFC 292. According to the longtime coach of 'Sugar', Tim Welch, the respective training camps for each fight could not be further apart.
Following his UFC 292 victory, the 29-year-old revealed that he suffered a rib injury several weeks before the fight. The injury forced 'Sugar' to stop any grappling training, a less-than-ideal situation as he was preparing for Sterling's elite wrestling and submission game.
But ahead of UFC 306, the bantamweight champion's coach has confirmed that their training camp went extremely well. During a recent episode of the Red Hawk Recap, Welch said this:
"The wrestling, I mean this training camp was f**king light years better the [Sterling] fight. I'll tell you that much. The Aljo-fight we did the AirDyne and we hit mits, that's what we did. No wrestling at all, zero, at least four weeks out from that."
Watch Tim Welch discuss Sean O'Malley's training camp below (55:55):
Sean O'Malley will target fresh cut above Merab Dvalishvili's eye at Noche UFC 306
Noche UFC 306 will take place at the Sphere, and the event already has much hype behind it with the promotion's CEO Dana White claiming it will be the company's best-ever production.
But disaster nearly struck in the main event as Dvalishvili suffered a cut during training several weeks ago. Fortunately, the cut was not too severe, meaning the fight would go ahead.
However, 'The Machine' opted to post footage of him receiving stitches on the cut online, much to White's annoyance.
'Sugar' has now claimed that he will target the fresh injury during their clash during a recent interview with Kevin Iole. He said this:
"I am a 100% going to open up that cut whether it's healed or not... I don't know how much it can heal, I've never really had any bad cuts so I'm not sure. But I'm gonna be, you know, that's the left side of his face, this right hand doesn't miss. So yeah, it just adds I think."
Catch Sean O'Malley's comments below (6:00):