The Sphinx. The Serengeti. The Sphere.
“Breathtaking,” “bewildering” and “visually spectacular” have been descriptors for each, but only one will be the host venue of an MMA card showcasing a rainbow-haired kickboxer with “$UGA” tattooed above his eyebrow in the main event of UFC 306 on Saturday night.
Sean O’Malley embraces the contrast and he’s ready to put on a show.
“It’s f—ing insane. It looks fake, wild,” the UFC bantamweight champion said about the Sphere, even if he’s insisting the arena won’t impact him come fight time.
“For me, it’s the octagon. That’s where I’m going to go perform, nothing else matters.”
When O’Malley and Merab Dvalishvili clash in the Sphere, they’ll join an exclusive list of headliners at Las Vegas’ newest extravagance — which has hosted bands such as U2 and events like the NHL Draft.
The Sphere has seats for 18,000 fans, with 10,000 featuring interactive haptic technology which allows users to physically experience the event through the application of forces, vibrations or motions and a 160,000-square foot wraparound interior LED screen with 16k resolution. Those bells and whistles came at a cost, with the venue carrying a building price tag of $2.3 billion. UFC president Dana White has said UFC 306 — which reportedly cost upwards of $30 million to put on — will never be replicated.
On top of it all, the night was dubbed “Noche UFC” as part of the UFC’s celebration of Mexican Independence Day, a revered holiday in combat sports.
How does it feel to be the promotion’s hand-picked star? To carry the star power weight of its biggest event while training for a title defense?
“I’m ready to kill,” O’Malley told The Athletic. “Training’s been going so good, Saturday the 14th couldn’t come fast enough. I’m ready to go.”
An over-the-top venue requires an over-the-top attraction, for which O’Malley is custom-built.
With loud hair, colorful tattoos and flashy knockouts, O’Malley has the look of a main eventer. And that’s before you factor in his 4.3 million Instagram followers and 283 million total views on his YouTube videos.
But in today’s viral landscape, one of the most important skills outside the octagon may be on the mic, where O’Malley’s trash-talking game that helps promote a fight is growing. With Dvalishvili, O’Malley already did that part, now he’s ready to walk the walk.
“I’ve called him ugly, stupid, big nose, short. Like I’ve said all of that, none of that’s really mean, it’s just true,” O’Malley said. “So I don’t think saying that over and over really does anything. Going out there and putting his lights out says a lot more.”
In the opposite corner, Dvalishvili couldn’t have taken a more different path to the Sphere.
A Georgian grappler aptly nicknamed “The Machine,” Dvalishvili is neither flashy nor thrilling, and while he packs power in his pressing stand-up game, he’s far more at home on the ground.
While the 5-foot-11 O’Malley racked up 12 knockouts and six performance-of-the-night bonuses, the 5-foot-6 Dvalishvili enters Saturday with the longest winning streak in the division at 10 victories, but nine of those have come via unanimous decision.
If O’Malley is a sniper of a striker with gunpowder in his gloves, Dvalishvili is an anaconda of a wrestler with Gorilla Glue in his grappling.
Compared to O’Malley’s garage full of pink Lamborghinis and the fast track he got to the UFC title, Dvalishvili is the UFC’s ugly duckling who spent years waiting for this shot.
Dvalishvili, too, is here to embrace that contrast.
“I just want to give people a good show and a good fight,” he said. “I know O’Malley will run around a lot and I want to bring the fight. I want to grab him and I want to punch his face.
“He’s a good striker. But as a man, he’s stupid, and that’s it. He’s a good fighter, but not a good guy. He’s too cocky.”
O’Malley the golden goose; Dvalishvili the everyman.
And for a devoted slice of the UFC fanbase, it’s the everyman they are cheering for, embracing Dvalishvili’s playful antics and lovable quips, while turning on O’Malley’s orchestrated flamboyance.
And it all started with a red jacket.
While orchestrated hype videos and words exchanged between fighters at news conferences are a big part of promoting MMA events, the best moments usually happen organically and on the fly.
On May 6, 2023, Dvalishvili’s close friend and training partner Aljamain Sterling had just finished defending his bantamweight title for a third time when O’Malley jumped into the cage to confront Sterling to hype up their eventual bout.
As O’Malley ripped off his bright red leather jacket to face off with Sterling, he handed it blindly to his left, where a confused Dvalishvili grabbed it and then giddily slipped it on.
“I thought it was a coat guy,” O’Malley said. “I took my jacket off just in case we were about to fight, I didn’t want to be constricted. So I handed it the ugliest guy in there because I assume he’s there for a reason, to hold my jacket. Supposedly, it was Merab.”
The gaudy jacket comically clashed with Dvalishvili’s mountainous look, and he immediately flashed an impish smirk. By the time O’Malley looked over, Dvalishvili was on top of the cage fist pumping to the crowd.
In that minute with a loud red jacket, the quiet Dvalishvili simply became lovingly known as Merab. And it’s with that kind of organic fandom that a seemingly boring Georgian wrestler can build the hype to the main event of the night in the Sphere.
In his trash talk, O’Malley jokes that the red jacket marked the first time anyone knew Merab was in the UFC. In his confidence, Merab says he can’t wait to celebrate his title win at UFC 306 with another new jacket.
The physical jacket may have been returned to O’Malley by the end of that night, but Merab still holds the fanfare of the jacket he swiped that night. On Saturday, he plans on leaving with even more bling.
“I just want to beat him up and win this belt, and then I will give him his jacket back,” Dvalishvili said, with another trademark smirk.
(Top image: Meech Robinson / The Athletic; Chris Unger / Zuffa LLC, Mike Roach / Zuffa LLC, Ethan Miller / Getty Images)
