Sports Reporter | Capper
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Noche UFC is finally here! The highly anticipated UFC 306 PPV live at the Las Vegas Sphere is this weekend and the fight is stacked from top to bottom.
In the main event, we have the two best bantamweights in the UFC “Suga” Sean O’Malley and Merab Dvalishvili battling it out for the bantamweight strap.
The rest of this fight card is littered with exciting fights throughout with that said, let’s take a deeper dive into this main event title for our O’Malley-Dvalishvili prediction and pick.
Sean O’Malley (18-1) the UFC bantamweight champion shocked the world by knocking out one of the greatest bantamweight champions ever Aljamain Sterling to capture his title.
After capturing his title, he avenged the only loss of his career when he dominated Marlon Vera to defend his bantamweight title for the first. He will now be looking to defend his belt a second time against the surging Merab Dvalishvili.
These two fighters finally getting to settle their beef that has been brewing for quite some time now this weekend. O’Malley says that he can’t wait to put Dvalishvili to sleep and it’s definitely on the table given his knockout capabilities.
While O’Malley certainly has the power to knock out anyone in the bantamweight division, he’s going to need to be calculated in this fight against Dvalishvili. He knows what Dvalishvili is capable of and that is to pick him up and slam him down for 25 minutes straight with no rest.
However, the way that O’Malley can snipe his opponents at range is going to serve him well against the shorter Dvalishvili who he has a 5” of height and 4” of reach against.
The way that O’Malley was able to utilize his lateral movement to stay off the cage and counter in his fight against Sterling will need to be replicated in this fight. Seeing as how Dvalishvili has been hurt on the feet before all it takes may be just one on Saturday for O’Malley to land the kill shot and retain his bantamweight title.
Merab Dvalishvili has fought his tail off to get to this point of his career. After defeating the former bantamweight, flyweight champion, and gold medalist Henry Cejudo he got his long-awaited title shot.
They don’t call this man ‘The Machine’ for nothing as he has an unwavering will to win and there is nothing that can stop him from just coming forward to put the pace and pressure on his opponents every minute of the fight.
Everyone knows what you get from Dvalishvili and that is relentless wrestling for 25 minutes but he’s gotta be cautious in this fight going against the deadliest striker he’s faced in his career thus far.
He will be the smaller fighter by a good margin in this fight putting him at a disadvantage at range so he will need to do a better job at using his feints to get on the inside of the reach of O’Malley to take this fight to the mat.
If Dvalishivli does what he has done to every other competitor he’s faced in his UFC career by dominating with his relentless grappling pressure, he can walk away with the bantamweight strap and become only the second UFC champion from Georgia.
This is the fight that we have been waiting a long time for as these bantamweights finally get to settle the score this weekend and see who the best bantamweight in the UFC is.
Ultimately, in this fight we are going to get what we expect from Dvalishvili which is relentless wrestling pressure and cardio for 15 minutes however, he is going to need to be absolutely perfect for 25 minutes meanwhile, all it takes is one punch from O’Malley to change the entire landscape of this fight and that is exactly what will happen as O’Malley lands a thunderous right hand that sits Dvalishvili down putting him away as the ‘Suga Show’ retains his UFC Bantamweight title.
FINAL O’MALLEY-DVALISHVILI PICK & PREDICTION: SEAN O’MALLEY (-146)
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