Sean O’Malley warns UFC bantamweight champion Merab Dvalishvili not to get too comfortable on the feet against Petr Yan.
Dvalishvili (21-4 MMA, 14-2 UFC) will make his fourth title defense of the year when he runs things back with Yan (19-5 MMA, 11-4 UFC) in the UFC 323 headliner Dec. 6 headliner from T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. O’Malley lost twice to Dvalishvili in title fights, most recently by submission at UFC 316 in June.
Dvalishvili smothered Yan in their first meeting in March 2023, going 11 for 49 in takedown attempts. But “The Machine” has since shown off his striking game, most recently rocking Cory Sandhagen en route to a unanimous decision win at UFC 320.
“Could that be his downfall? He’s way more confident in his hands, and his hands have improved a lot,” O’Malley said of Dvalishvili on his YouTube channel. “He actually cracked me a few times in that second fight. It’s just so hard to fight someone when you have to respect their wrestling so much, and then they start throwing hands. He’s doing a really good job of mixing it up.
“Could that be the downfall for him vs. Petr? He gets a little bit confident in those hands, Petr’s counters – I rewatched me vs. Petr a couple of days ago, and the couple times I would sit in there with the one-two, and he would counter so f*cking hard and fast. If Merab does decide ‘I do want to trade with him a little bit,’ that could be his downfall.”
Yan said he was only 50 percent going into his first fight against Dvalishvili, and O’Malley thinks certain factors could change things.
“Petr supposedly hurt his hand or had a really bad injury on his hand going into that first fight,” O’Malley said. “I will say, the first fight was in the small cage, fighting in the small cage, and the big cage is completely different. It was 50-45, Petr didn’t win a single round.”
But who has improved more since?
“That’s a good question because Petr has improved a ton since that last fight,” O’Malley said. “He went out there and beat Figueiredo, he beat Song Yadong, and Marcus McGhee. Petr has looked really good, definitely looks like he’s improved. Merab has improved, I would say, more than anybody. After that first fight with me, I feel like him going to that Umar fight, he leveled-up a ton.
“And then after the Umar fight, like the second time I fought him, I feel like from the first time I fought him to the second time I fought him, it was only eight months, I regret having surgery and fighting a machine like that after eight months. It was probably not the smartest move I’ve done, especially against a f*cking machine like Merab, but his improvement has been insane from each fight. So, I’d say Merab’s probably improved more.”
