Citizen Merab Free To Slap O’Malley’s Coach

Dvalishvili insisted his feud with O’Malley wasn’t personal. His feud with O’Malley’s coach Tim Welsh? That’s a different matter.

Merab Dvalishvili insists his feud with Sean O’Malley and his team isn’t personal, even if Team Suga has gotten under his skin a few times.

Dvalishvili was initially the one taunting O’Malley endlessly in the lead-up to their Noche UFC fight announcement. He found himself an O’Malley lookalike and made several elaborate videos mocking the bantamweight champion. But O’Malley shrugged all that off and started firing back. He made fun of Merab’s nose. He made fun of Merab’s home country of Georgia. And that did make Dvalishvili angry.

But during a UFC 306 media scrum, “The Machine” claimed he was calm and collected now.

“No, it’s not personal,” he said. “This a professional fight for the UFC belt. This is for legacy. I was mad at him a couple times. I was very mad when he mentioned my country in a disrespectful way. Because my country, it’s more than religion for me. I have my country [on my necklace], and that’s why I started fighting, because I want to represent my country.”

“This is healthy competition. This is what we do. Then when somebody, it doesn’t matter who, disrespects your family or your country, you have to be mad. If you’re a man you have to be mad and I wanted to smack his face that time. But now I have an even more important thing. To beat him on Saturday night and grab his belt, take his belt.”

“I can talk after the fight,” Dvalishvili said. “Maybe I can forgive him, or we can talk. I want to keep it that way. I want to just win and show him he has to be humble, and he has to respect everybody.”

Later in the media scrum the subject of O’Malley’s coach Tim Welsh came up. Footage from the Sean O’Malley vs. Aljamain Sterling fight came out recently showing Welsh pretending to be Sterling’s corner and yelling out bad advice. He ordered Aljo to get moving one second before Sterling rushed in on a takedown, only to eat a counter punch that knocked him out.

Dvalishvili, a friend and training partner of Sterling, has since stated he plans on slapping Welsh on sight if they meet in Las Vegas during fight week. When asked if he was willing to risk everything for a shot at slapping Welsh, Merab said everything wasn’t at stake.

“I became a full-time fighter, moved to Vegas, and everything came,” Dvalishvili said. “I fixed my immigration papers and I can go to my country or whatever country I want. Now I’m a citizen, and now I can slap Sean O’Malley’s coach and no one will deport me from the U.S.”

UFC security will have to be on their toes for three more days. With millions of dollars worth of visuals programmed with Merab Dvalishvili’s face cooked in, there’s no more time for switch-ups to happen if someone suffers a cut in a street fight.