Sorry, Sean O’Malley, your request for a fight with Ilia Topuria has been turned down … by his mother.
O’Malley successfully defended his bantamweight title at UFC 299, pummeling Marlon “Chito” Vera across five rounds to win a shutout 50-45 decision (watch the highlights here). After the fight he called for a champion vs. champion superfight with new featherweight title holder Ilia Topuria. An exciting and bankable fight for sure, but not one Topuria is willing to accept at this moment.
“Suga, congrats. Was a beautiful performance!” Topuria wrote on Twitter in response to O’Malley’s callout. “There is a fight chasing you with Merab [Dvalishvili]. Get that done first.”
Perhaps O’Malley didn’t realize that Topuria and Dvalishvili are both Georgian fighters that consider each other brothers. When they both fought at UFC 298, they cut weight together. They build each other up, and as Merab has proven, they aren’t willing to step on each others’ title aspirations.
Even Ilia’s mother was quick to dismiss a Topuria vs. O’Malley fight with Dvalishvili waiting in the wings.
“It’s been a long time since our Merab has earned this fight and it needs to happen!” Inga Topuria wrote in the comments of a Facebook post.
She’s right about that. After a rough 0-2 start in the UFC, Dvalishvili has gone 10-0 in the bantamweight division. His last three opponents were former champions Jose Aldo, Petr Yan, and Henry Cejudo. He handled all three with relative ease. After six years of non-stop winning, it’s time for “The Machine” to get his shot at championship gold.
This is the second time O’Malley has called out Topuria hoping fan sentiment would carry him into a lucrative fight with the European star. “El Matador” has the nations of Georgia and Spain behind him, and is on the cusp of legitimate super-stardom. While Dvalishvili is finally starting to get the appreciation he deserves from fans, there’s no question which man boosts O’Malley’s pay-per-view earnings into the stratosphere … and it ain’t the wrestling-heavy “Machine.”
Everyone keeps telling “Suga” to fight Merab, and to his credit he’s been willing if slightly less eager to accept that fight.
“I wanted the Ilia fight, it excites me, but I also thought the fans would get excited about it,” O’Malley said leading up to UFC 299. “I got a lot of pushback saying ‘you’re ducking Merab, Merab is next.’ So, Merab’s next. Let’s do Merab. I’m telling you guys, I knock Merab out.
“He’s sloppy. I’m accurate. I’m too fast. I’m too sharp. I put Merab’s lights out — worse than Aljo.”
This story originally appeared on MMA Mania
