Former Bantamweight champion Sean O’Malley has had his say on the latest Merab Dvalishvili incident with fans.
Current Bantamweight champion Merab Dvalishvili was in Vegas to corner teammate Aljamain Sterling in his loss against Movsar Evloev and Merab couldn’t resist an altercation with fans, resulting in a member of his team throwing punches at a fan.
No stranger to trouble at live events, Merab jumped two barriers and confronted a heckler at a CJI grappling event in August, which resulted in the Georgian fighter grabbing the fan’s hair.
Despite being a star within the UFC after derailing the Sean O’Malley train, Merab can’t resist finding trouble and did this at UFC Fight Night Paris where he confronted a fan, although on that one occasion, it never came to anything more than words exchanged.
Sean O’Malley goads Merab Dvalshvilli following altercation
Following Merab dethroning ‘Sugar’ Sean, the pair were always going to remain rivals, with O’Malley never shying away from the limelight and Merab consistently finding himself in some form of fan-related trouble.
Taking to X, O’Malley jumped at the chance to make a subtle dig at Merab’s style of fighting through the fan incident.
‘Merab only throws hands with fans in the stands’.
At the time of writing this article, Merab has yet to respond to O’Malley, but one thing to be certain of is ‘The Machine’ making his feelings known and responding to the post.
Will we see a rematch between O’Malley and Merab?
O’Malley suffered just the second defeat of his career when he lost the Bantamweight title to Merab in September, and O’Malley has been going back and forth with the division’s contenders on social media ever since.
Merab dominated O’Malley on the night, only briefly allowing some success in the third round, so there is the argument Merab should fight the likes of Umar Nurmagomedov and Petr Yan before a rematch takes place.
| Fighter | Record |
| Merab Dvalishvili | 22 fights 18 wins 4 losses |
| Sean O’Malley | 21 fights 18 wins 2 losses 1 NC |
| Umar Nurmagomedov | 18 fights 18 wins 0 losses |
| Petr Yan | 23 fights 18 wins 5 losses |
With Merab scheduled to fight Umar in January, despite O’Malley still being ranked as the number one contender in the division, that leaves Petr Yan available to rematch O’Malley following the controversial split decision loss in 2023.