Sean O’Malley lost his bantamweight title to Merab Dvalishvili at UFC 306 due to a lackluster performance marked by inactivity and difficulty handling Dvalishvili’s relentless pace and pressure, culminating in a unanimous decision loss.
Sean O’Malley has a lot to reflect on after a lackluster outing cost him the bantamweight title at UFC 306.
Despite promises of a first-round knockout and going into the fight as the incumbent champion, O’Malley struggled to deal with Merab Dvalishvili’s pace and pressure. This led to six takedowns and over 10 minutes of control time from the Georgian bantamweight.
In the end, O’Malley lost a unanimous decision on the scorecards. Dvalishvili was crowned as the new champion.
“He looked flat,” UFC CEO Dana White said about O’Malley’s performance at the UFC 306 post-fight press conference. “He didn’t look sharp.”
As much as O’Malley struggled throughout the fight, he almost made a stunning comeback after snapping off a front kick to the body that hurt Dvalishvili badly in the final round. Realizing his opponent was hurt, O’Malley rushed forward to try and inflict more damage but Dvalishvili circled away and stayed out of trouble until the final horn sounded.
Outside of that moment, O’Malley never had Dvalishvili in any real trouble during the entire fight.
White believes O’Malley’s inactivity is really what cost him. After looking at the statistics from the fight, he realized that the always colorful bantamweight just wasn’t throwing many punches during the five-round fight.
“He didn’t look crisp until the last round,” White said. “He hurt him with that body shot and he knew it, and he kept going in trying to finish. But I looked at the punch stats; it was like six in a couple of the rounds.”
According to official UFC stats, O’Malley landed just 5 out of 10 significant strikes in round two and then 6 out of 9 in round four. For the entire fight, O’Malley connected with 47 significant strikes compared to 82 for Dvalishvili.
Obviously nobody was more upset about the loss than O’Malley. However, White didn’t have any easy answers about why he performed the way he did on Saturday.
Perhaps most credit goes to Dvalishvili, who never allowed O’Malley to settle into any rhythm during the fight. With Dvalishvili in constant pursuit, O’Malley was forced to react off his backfoot and couldn’t find his timing before fending off takedowns round after round.
Ultimately, O’Malley lost the decision and his UFC title. Now he’ll have to get back to the drawing board to see if he can earn another shot at the belt in the future.