In September, the main event of UFC 306: O'Malley vs Dvalishvili started strangely as 'The Machine' took a break from fighting to shout and point at the 'Suga' team.
Now, four months after that bantamweight title showdown, the UFC has released corner camera footage of the incident – which saw Sean O'Malley's head coach criticized by the wider MMA fanbase for his actions.
Photo by Christian Petersen/Getty Images
UFC 306 footage shows Sean O'Malley's coach distracting Merab Dvalishvili
Just seconds into the opening round, chaos broke out after the Georgian started shouting in Suga's corner, prompting referee Herb Dean to pause the action to warn Merab Dvalishvili to focus on the fight ahead.
The whole situation was quite unusual, with both fans and the commentary booth confused as to what was going on. Now, ahead of his first title defense at UFC 311, we finally have our answer.
In corner camera footage shared by the UFC on YouTube, coach Tim Welch was caught shouting in a patronizing tone – “Meraby, you might need to be patient” – in a blatant attempt to distract the title challenger.
Referee Herb Dean was quick to stop the fight, but first warned Dvalishvili for his reaction and secondly warned teammate Aljamain Sterling for trying to get his attention – all while Tim Welch pretended to look at O'Malley called. all the time.
Although Dvalishvili was widely criticized by many fans at the time, it seems the consensus on this new footage is that you can't really blame the Georgian for his reaction.
“Bro, Merab is getting hate but he is not wrong here,” reads the top comment on YouTube, while other comments read: “Now that I know the condescending attitude in which he said that, I don't blame Merab for saying P*** **.”
“Coaches shouldn't behave like this. Coach your fighter, don't antagonize the opponent.”
Merab Dvalishvili and Herb Dean respond to the controversial statements
When Dvalishvili spoke at the post-fight press conference a few hours later, he was understandably seething at both Tim Welch and the veteran official's response.
“I was there and I'm fighting, I'm a professional fighter so I'm focused [on the fight]and that never happened to me [before]I never pay attention to the other angle, but Tim's voice sounded very familiar to me because he did the same thing to Aljamain.
When Sean O'Malley won the title for the first time, similar CCTV footage showed coach Welch telling Sterling, “You've got to go.” The 'Funkmaster' listened to that advice and was eliminated just a few seconds later.
As aptly noted by the bantamweight champion: “If you do the same thing in basketball or football, they will disqualify you, but I don't think so here. [in the UFC].”
Herb Dean explained via Helen Yee Sports that he had to stop the fight to warn all parties because there is a rule about “excessive coaching” that Welch broke.
“It's happening and we're addressing it and it's been happening as long as the sport has been here, and we even coach the referee through the fighter, 'Okay, Herb is going to stand you up because all he wants to do is hold you down and he's a boring b****-a** wrestler', you know what I mean?'
Welch himself would later claim that he was completely unaware that such a rule existed.
“I sat down and was very calm and said, 'You have to be patient, Merab' and then he starts bucking and almost has a seizure… I didn't know there was a rule that if you have a callout, you can It's not the other man's name.
“I told Herb, I said some of our calls had Merab's name on them and he said, 'No, no,' I thought I didn't know that [but] I would like to see that damn line.”
Let's hope Khabib Nurmagomedov doesn't pull similar tricks in Umar Nurmagomedov's corner at UFC 311 on January 18; although we assume Dvalishvili may not handle 'The Eagle' in the same way he did Welch.
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