Ahead of his UFC 316 title rematch against Merab Dvalishvili, Sean O’Malley has drafted in the help of one of the greatest fighters of all time.
On June 7, Sean O’Malley looks to reclaim his UFC bantamweight title when he clashes against Merab Dvalishvili at UFC 316 in Newark, New Jersey.
Following their first meeting at the historic UFC 306 event last September, soon after the fight, O’Malley revealed that he went into it with a torn labrum, claiming that was the reason for his lackluster performance.
However, now just a few weeks out from their rematch, O’Malley’s head coach Tim Welch has claimed that the $2.3 billion Sphere lighting was one of the main reasons for ‘Suga’s’ loss.
Sean O’Malley brings Demetrious Johnson into UFC 316 camp
Ahead of his rematch against ‘The Machine’, O’Malley has given up social media in an attempt to fully lock in to his fight camp.
And with that, he invited former UFC middleweight champion Israel Adesanya to his custom-built gym, to take part in some training with him and Welch.
However, in a more calculated move, the 30-year-old has invited the former UFC flyweight king Demetrious Johnson to his fight camp.
Johnson is widely regarded as one of the greatest combat sports athletes of all time, holding several UFC records, including the most title defenses in UFC flyweight history.
Since his retirement from MMA in 2024, ‘Mightymouse’ has continued to train and has even trained with the likes of Islam Makhachev, Khabib Nurmagomedov, and Umar Nurmagomedov.
Being most known for his sheer well-roundedness, O’Malley has seemingly invited Johnson into his camp to help him with his takedown defense, as in several of the images posted to Johnson’s social media, he is shooting takedowns on the former bantamweight champion.
Merab Dvalishvili suffered brutal cut just weeks out from UFC 316
The Georgian champion has become extremely popular amongst the UFC fanbase because of his transparency with his fans and because of his hilarious personality.
However, his transparency has once gotten him in hot water with the UFC boss Dana White who labeled him ‘dumb’ ahead of his UFC 306 fight after he posted videos online of him removing stitches above his eye with what seemed to be garden shears.
Despite that, the champion worried fans recently when he posted images online of him in his fight camp with a brutal cut above his eye. Fortunately, the cut isn’t deemed to be a fight-threatening one and the two are still scheduled to clash on June 7.