‘Sphere’ Lighting Caused Merab Dvalishvili Upset? Team Sean O’Malley Nitpicks Dana White’s $20 Million Dream Venture

Sean O'Malley's coach predicts to properly snipe Merab Dvalishvili KO at UFC 316 PPV without 'Sphere' lights to worry about.

‘Sphere’ Lighting Caused Merab Dvalishvili Upset? Team Sean O’Malley Nitpicks Dana White’s $20 Million Dream Venture

Sphere setting hampered Sean O'Malley's performance against Merab Dvalishvili (Source: X)

A handful of weeks away from their UFC 316 PPV title rematch, the fighters are getting their mean faces on. Merab Dvalishvili will make sure his second defense goes without a hitch. Meanwhile, Sean O’Malley will look to repeat no mistakes from last time that cost him gold. The previous loss was partly attributed to the $20 Million MSG Company ‘Sphere’ setting of all things!

Sean O’Malley and Merab Dvalishvili will lock horns on June 7th in New Jersey for their rematch. The last time out, ‘Machine’ swiped him out for gold at the Noche UFC PPV, aka UFC 306. The one-of-a-kind Riyadh Season funded project punctuated a whopping $21,829,245 live gate result, which is a sporting gate high for the Sphere.

The venture, from UFC’s side of things, also had quite a few good takeaways, specifically tech-wise. However, Team ‘Suga’ Show helmsman, Tim Welch, said the 16K resolution LED-covered venue and haptic feedback, immense lighting, and other such stuff threw the former champ off his game.

I rewatched the fight in slow-mo so many times, …There were tons and tons of shots that barely missed by inches that would’ve completely changed the fight, and I think a lot of it had to do with The Sphere and the lighting. And then not only [the hip] injury, I just feel like in our lives that was supposed to happen. It really caused us to truly level up as humans, and looking back, it was really good for us.

Sean O’Malley underwent surgery on his hip cartilage (labrum) after his humiliating loss at The Sphere. It essentially put him out of a camp for a while; Team O’Malley, though, said they rebounded for the better. The 2024 ESPY for Best UFC Fighter has said he has taken a sabbatical from world distractions and social media nuances.

Meanwhile, Welch presented that a better setting would help the striker with shot selections, for which he is widely known. As for Dvalishvili, Welch told ESPN’s Brett Okamoto in a UFC 316 PPV pre-fight virtual media sitdown that he’s expecting the same from the champ.

Once billing him as the UFC 135-Pound GOAT, Welch knows the champ has paid it in full and gone to the glory road and will mean to keep to it. So, he said they were tirelessly working on O’Malley’s wrestling and anti-wrestling game plans. However, the Georgian ffighter isn’t easy to keep down. The champion’s coach, from his side of things, told a very different story.

Merab Dvalishvili’s coach reveals scary situation ahead of Umar Nurmagomedov title defense

After stitching up a 10-fight streak over top names, Merab Dvalishvili finally realized his dream of snagging bantamweight gold last September. Now, the former 135-pound kingpin Sean O’Malley has the unique chance to challenge for it right off the bat and lean all the way in.

UFC 316's Merab Dvalishvili nearly missed his first title defense
UFC 316’s Merab Dvalishvili nearly missed his first title defense (Source: X)

After the Sphere PPV headliner, though, the Georgian ‘Machine’ went up against the previously undefeated phenom Umar Nurmagomedov. Despite being the underdog going into the fight, Dvalishvili pulled off one of his biggest wins to date when he thwarted Nurmagomedov’s attempts. Head coach John Wood recently said the Serra-Longo Fight Team wrestler did that at far less than 100%.

I think that Umar was going to be the toughest fight for Merab at the time, …I think we’ll end up fighting him again some time and same thing, we beat them. They asked for the fight and [they came out] ‘Oh I’m injured, I’m this, I’m that.’ Well, Merab was half-dead for that fight…You don’t understand, he had an open wound, he had a staph infection, he was on all kinds of antibiotics. I personally, if it was up to me honestly, and I haven’t really told anybody, I probably would have pulled him out of the fight. 

Dvalishvili’s problem of poking with open wounds, getting contact bacteria, needing antibiotics, and such, carried over to the UFC 311 PPV co-headliner as well. The coach said he would have essentially pulled him out. But the champ continued and hustled on to give a ‘Nurmagomedov’ a run for their money in the grappling department.

Dvalishvili had punctuated 6 takedowns/10:03 of top mount time and a gargantuan amount of 214 total strikes against Suga. Then, he defeated Nurmagomedov in his own wrestling-heavy game and left very little room. If he goes into this camp with full health, the champ would mean business as usual and try to keep to his usual monster output.

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