On June 7, Sean O’Malley will challenge Merab Dvalishvili for the UFC bantamweight championship in an immediate rematch of their Noche UFC encounter.
For Dvalishvili, this is a chance to successfully defend his belt for the second time after defeating Umar Nurmagomedov. For Sean O’Malley, there’s no warm-up fight – he’s heading straight back into the lion’s den against the man who took the belt from him in the first place.
For a lot of fans and pundits, though, there’s a lot of worry in the air regarding Sean O’Malley’s ability to actually regain the strap. He’ll almost certainly have made adjustments and it’ll likely be a really competitive fight, but he needs that extra edge if he’s going to take back the belt.
The tall task for Sean O’Malley
The man known as ‘Suga’ has built up a strong reputation for himself as one of the best strikers in the Ultimate Fighting Championship. Unfortunately, we live in a time where wrestlers are pretty dominant at the elite level, and Sean needs to find a way to get past that.
For Merab Dvalishvili, this is the most confident he’s ever been. He is coming off the back of two incredibly impressive victories and he’s showing absolutely no signs of slowing down. If he sticks to the game plan he enacted the first time around then he’ll probably get his hand raised again, but you can’t afford to be too complacent.
If he decides to mix it up and keep Sean O’Malley on his toes, then it could go one of two ways. He could push for a finish to really end the rivalry in style, or he could open the door for Sean to land one of his devastating shots.
Either way, we’re excited to see how it’s all going to play out.
