Midnight Mania! Sandman Sees Suga Stop The Machine

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Welcome to Midnight Mania!

The next step for the Bantamweight division is clear: Sean O’Malley vs. Merab Dvalishvili has to happen.

“Suga” captured the throne by knocking out Aljamain Sterling, Dvalishvili’s longtime friend and team mate. Even prior to that win, however, “The Machine” had been chasing a match up versus the kickboxer for several years. Now that O’Malley settled his grudge versus Marlon Vera (watch here), and Dvalishvili extended his massive win streak even further by beating up Henry Cejudo, everything is lined up for the two to finally meet inside the Octagon.

Currently, there is not yet a targeted date for the Bantamweight title fight. Whenever it is booked, however, Cory Sandhagen can be counted on as an interested viewer. “The Sandman” is on a quality win streak of his own and is a favorite to face the winner of that bout, though he may have to fight at least once more to really lock down the shot.

Who does Sandhagen expect to win? Though he acknowledges Dvalishvili’s grappling edge, Sandhagen also thinks O’Malley’s stand up advantage is so significant that a knockout is very possible.

“I think O’Malley has a really good shot at clipping Merab and finishing him,” Sandhagen told Fanatics View (via Yahoo Sports). “That’s never really a good place to put all your eggs in a basket. That’s not a super reliable way to win. But, it’s reliable for O’Malley usually. So, I think if you have to start standing against O’Malley for five rounds and he’s that much better of a striker than Merab.

“Merab is a far superior wrestler and grappler than O’Malley is, but O’Malley is a far superior striker, so that makes it really interesting. Also just the style Merab has in grappling, he doesn’t really hold people down. He kind of lets them work back up and so if I was Merab, I would try and stick him to the mat and keep him there. If I was O’Malley, I would use that first minute of each round to really do what he did to Sterling and pinpoint, and missile this guy from a far. So, I can see O’Malley winning.”

Insomnia

Patricio Pitbull vs. Aaron Pico would be an absolutely must-watch match up.

Khabib has been retired for a long time now, but the legend lives on strong.

I get that we don’t want to encourage bad behavior, but … give the guy some pit-side seats!

We have a Giblert Melendez situation over at UFC Atlantic City.

Merab recruited a very convincing O’Malley look-a-like for his latest bit.

Zhalgas Zhumagulov’s streak as the unluckiest man in MMA continues.

Andre Lima requests mercy for Igor Severino, the man who bit him. Could be a good comeback story someday?

Slips, rips, and KO clips

Both men were throwing right hands with bad intentions, and Soares landed first.

Flowing into power shots!

I get that Saenchai isn’t fighting the cream of the crop anymore, but his streak of just destroying all these regular kickboxers at 43 years of age is still wild.

Random Land

Medieval paintings (click through for full thread):

Midnight Music: Indie rock, 2004

Sleep well Maniacs! More martial arts madness is always on the way.