Before he coached Sean O’Malley to a UFC Championship in 2023, Tim Welch was knocking on the door of ‘The Ultimate Fighter’.
UFC 316 is right around the corner and team O’Malley will look to recapture the title they lost to Merab Dvalishvili at the Sphere last September.
Dvalishvili defeated Sean O’Malley via unanimous decision after he exchanged words with O’Malley’s head coach Tim Welch mid-fight at UFC 306.
Welch started coaching O’Malley after his fighting career was put on hold in 2017.
Instead of fighting for another shot at the UFC, Welch invested in the career of a young ‘Suga’ Sean, a fellow Montana native.
Welch is a 20-fight veteran with a record of 14-6 who didn’t get a callback from Dana White.
- READ MORE: Sean O’Malley’s coach forced UFC’s greatest ever fighter to tap out in new UFC 316 gym footage
Tim Welch lost his fight to get into ‘The Ultimate Fighter’ house
Like many of its previous seasons, Season 22 of ‘The Ultimate Fighter’ reality TV show had fighters compete for a spot in the ‘TUF’ house, where they’d live together as they fought for a UFC contract.
Season 22 was USA vs. Europe with Urijah Faber and Conor McGregor as opposing coaches.
In his fight to get into the house, Welch put up a great effort against future UFC fighter Jason Gonzales but lost via second-round TKO after a kick to the liver.
Two fights later, Welch thought he was on the verge of a UFC call.
“When I was 27, I’d lost my Ultimate Fighter fight,” Welch said on FREESTYLEBENDER.
“Dana said win two more. I won two more. He didn’t bring me back,” Welch added.
“So I’m like, I’m gonna take a third fight…”
Welch’s third fight after ‘The Ultimate Fighter’ would be the last of his career.
Welch had his jaw broken by former Canadian champion Dejan Kajić, who defeated him via submission in Aug. 2017.
“The first punch of the fight hit me with the uppercut. Boom. And I was like, f—. That was a good shot, but it didn’t hurt too hard. But then I couldn’t close my mouth, so I completely broke my jaw.”
“Clean break, so it’s like hanging off for that whole first round. I tried to take him down, and I did take him down. Second round, I’m like, f—, dude. There’s something severely wrong…
“And then, I ended up losing that fight,” said Welch.
Sean O’Malley says Tim Welch found his true calling as a coach after he broke his jaw
Following the injury and a lot of smoothies for his wired-shut jaw, Welch picked up his first student, an 18-year-old Sean O’Malley, future bantamweight champion of the world.
“Ever since Sean moved down [to Phoenix, Arizona] as a kid, I always was kind of his mentor because there’s not a lot of people who make it to a bigger show from Montana. And he saw me on [Bellator MMA] TV, invited him down and we trained at the lab for a long time.
“When he was in fight camp, I’d still try to teach him how to eat healthy and teach him how to hydrate and stuff like that. After that jaw break, it just kinda turned into more, like, coaching him and putting all my effort into him.”
Welch learned from the late legendary coach Robert Follis and got O’Malley into reading books for growth and mentality.
O’Malley credits Welch as his ‘cheat code’ for his nearly spotless fighting career, seeing the silver lining between the hardships of a broken jaw injury to new beginnings as one of the most successful MMA coaches in the world.
“Tim, [you were] meant to be a coach though,” O’Malley said to Welch.
“Like, you literally everything you went through with Robert Follis, all the coaches you learned from, and then even just breaking your jaw, it’s like you were meant to be in the position you’re in right now.
“Every time I had a fight coming up, he would switch from chasing his goals, getting in the UFC doing stuff to kinda like coaching me, hitting mitts, coming on fight week trips with me, and teaching me all that s— to where I didn’t have to…
“I still had to go through it and learn and experience stuff, but I gotta take a lot of shortcuts on what not to do because he did a lot of things wrong.”
“He learned from [his fighting career],” O’Malley said of Welch.
“I didn’t have to do wrong. So, it was like a cheat code. He was literally doing all this s— wrong, and then he was teaching me how to not do it and it was like a cheat code.”
“Kinda like Freddie Roach,” former UFC Middleweight Champion Israel Adesanya said of coach Welch.
Freddie Roach is a legendary boxing trainer who went from pro fighter to coaching Manny Pacquiao and even UFC legend Georges St-Pierre to world championships.