Sean O’Malley, head coach react to Merab Dvalishvili screaming to corner, back kisses at UFC 306

Photo by Christian Petersen/Getty Images

The Sean O’Malley vs. Merab Dvalishvili UFC 306 main event began as most fights do, and then seconds in, Dvalishvili began screaming at O’Malley’s head coach Tim Welch which caused a brief stop to the action.

“That really caught me off guard,” Welch said on O’Malley’s YouTube channel. “Literally, we sat down, I was really calm, I said, ‘You got to be patient, Merab. You got to be patient, Merab.’ Then he starts bucking around, almost having a seizure.”

Dvalishvili would go on to defeat O’Malley via unanimous decision to capture the UFC bantamweight title at Sphere this past Saturday.

Welch was certainly thrown off by Dvalishvili’s early reaction. Referee Herb Dean, who has taken flack from the MMA community for his performance in the fight, apparently told Welch that the opposing coach is not allowed to yell out the opponent’s name during the fights.

“So I didn’t realize there was a rule that if you have a callout, it can’t be the other guy’s name,” Welch explained. “I told Herb that some of our callouts have Merab’s name in it, and he’s like, ‘Nope, nope, nope.’ Didn’t know that. Would love to see that f*cking rule.”

That wasn’t the only weird moment in the fight. At the end of Round 2, Dvalishvili grabbed a front face lock, and began kissing the upper back of O’Malley. Dean began yelling at Dvalishvili, which led the then-challenger to break the hold, stand up, and head back to his corner.

Wisely, O’Malley stood up and punched Dvalishvili before the horn sounded, which confused the commentary team, and even Aljamain Sterling — who was in the corner of Dvalishvili.

O’Malley, who plans to take an extended break after the loss, reacted to the two very strange moments in the first 10 minutes of the fight.

“I don’t know why the ref stopped the fight,” O’Malley said. “Then he was kissing me. I don’t know, there was like two to three seconds left on the time, looking back on it I’m surprised that I even knew that, and then the ref was like, ‘Hey, quit kissing him on the back,’ so he got up thinking the time was up, and then I juiced him once. I was hoping I’d put him out.

“But Aljo got up like he was about to f*cking storm the cage, like I f*cking hit him illegally. I don’t think he even realized there was time on the clock. The ref didn’t stand you up, he said to quit f*cking doing that.”