Chael Sonnen has a controversial take on the first fight between Merab Dvalishvili and Sean O’Malley.
O’Malley (18-2 MMA, 10-2 UFC) lost his bantamweight title to Dvalishvili at UFC 306 this past September. O’Malley was taken down six times and controlled for more than 10 minutes in a unanimous decision loss.
Sonnen thinks the judges may have gotten it wrong.
“O’Malley vs. Merab, I’m not sure that Merab won that night,” Sonnen told MMA Junkie. “I mean, that wasn’t really met with a lot of controversy. That was pretty widely accepted, and we all got up and went home. That surprised me. If you go back and you watch that fourth and fifth round, you might come to a different opinion than you did the first time. I mean, that fight might have been 3-2 O’Malley.”
O’Malley argued that he should have gotten his hand raised, an opinion which was met with plenty of criticism.
“He wasn’t crazy,” Sonnen said of O’Malley. “If you went back and watched it, the announcers were very influencing from the very beginning on that – and they are in most fights, that’s the way it goes. From my perspective, because I didn’t have the announcer, I was there live, so I didn’t get to hear any of that. I just watched the fight. And when it was done, I’m like, ‘Oh, close fight, but O’Malley won,’ and it just wasn’t the case.”
O’Malley will get an opportunity to avenge that loss when he rematches Dvalishvili (19-4 MMA, 12-2 UFC) on June 7 in the UFC 316 main event at Prudential Center in Newark, N.J.
