Las Vegas – New UFC bantamweight champion Merab Dvalishvili wasn’t just dealing with Sean O’Malley at Noche UFC on Saturday night, but his corners trying to trick him as well.
O’Malley’s corners were allegedly yelling at Dvalishvili to try to confuse him during the fight. The same tactic was allegedly used against Aljamain Sterling as well which can be seen on videos spread on social media.
“I was in and I’m fighting, I’m a professional fighter, I’m focused and it never happened to me I never pay attention to other corners,” Dvalishvili told reporters including Cageside Press at his post-fight scrum.
“(The) voice it was very familiar because he was doing same thing to Aljo. There is the clip on social media. Everybody we saw that. He was doing same thing. Very disrespectful ‘Merab you got to go’ he was talking sh*t at me.”
Dvalishvili (18-4) wasn’t having it and yelled back at O’Malley’s corner to cut it out.
“I tell him to stop it. Nobody was telling him to stop. He was just (keeping on) doing this. If you do same thing in basketball or in soccer they will do disqualification for you. I guess here not,” he said.
According to Dvalishvili referee Herb Dean finally told O’Malley’s corner to stop, but he still heard a bit during the fight.
Dvalishvili had long road to get to the title coming into the fight on a 10-fight win streak. When asked if that made the win that much sweeter the Georgian fighter couldn’t agree more. The reason why was attached to the love for a teammate and friend.
“Yes absolutely. I don’t regret nothing. I’m grateful. I’m grateful because I have a life, and I have a friend like Aljamain Sterling,” he told Cageside Press.
“When I said we are friends, we are really friends, we are sparring partners. We live next to each other in Vegas and we always call each other, support each other, we know each other’s family. We are friends and I’m grateful to have a friend like this.”
Watch the entire post-fight scrum with new UFC bantamweight champion Merab Dvalishvili above.
