Many think that Sean O’Malley is facing the toughest challenge of his life on UFC Noche (306). After all, his upcoming opponent, Merab Dvalishvili is a world-class wrestler and, at least on paper, a stylistic nightmare for ‘Suga’. However, as anyone who has seen even one of O’Malley’s recent interviews knows, the bantamweight champ is totally unconcerned about Dvalishvili.

In fact, the Montana native has predicted that he will knock out Dvalishvili without much problems, and do it quickly, as he did to ‘The Machine’s best friend, Aljamain Sterling last year. And the reason ‘Suga’ is so confident in predicting this has been revealed in a recent interview with sports journalist extraordinaire, Stephen A. Smith.

The ESPN journalist asked ‘Suga’ about the background of his upcoming fight and asked him how exactly it came about. ‘Suga’ pointed out that since Dvalishvili was the #1 ranked bantamweight (and had won his title eliminator earlier this year), it was natural for him to be next for the title shot. “The fight was very easy to happen. Merab’s next and in everyone’s eyes Merab is the number one guy. I love this fight,” he said.

But that’s not the interesting part. O’Malley then revealed that he seemed so relaxed and confident for the Dvalishvili fight simply because he had a much more dangerous opponent in mind for his next fight- featherweight champ Ilia Topuria.

“I actually was calling out Ilia Topuria, who in my mind, he’s the 145-pound champ, is one of the most scariest fights for me right now. I was calling out a guy that I thought was even more scary than Merab. So people were giving me sh** saying ‘No, we want you to fight Merab.’ I was like ‘Hell, yeah I will if you guys want me to fight someone who I think is less of a scary fight, I’ll take that all day.’ So the fight was very easy to come together and Merab’s getting whooped in a few days,” he added.

Topuria, of course, has just proven himself to be perhaps the most dangerous fight in the promotion after his spectacular knockout of the nigh unbeatable Alexander Volkanovski on UFC 298 this February. But since Topuria-O’malley didn’t actually materialize (despite both men seemingly being interested), the Montanan native was more than happy to face the much less dangerous Dvalishvili. This, of course, raises one important question in many people’s minds.

Why did Ilia Topuria turn down a fight with Sean O’Malley?

Sean O’Malley and Ilia Topuria have been involved in a feud online for the past year. The whole affair started after ‘Suga’, undoubtedly trying to build hype for a possible bout between the two had some unflattering things to say about ‘El Matador’s physical appearance and his lack of title defenses.

This prompted the bombastic Topuria, who is not one to take things lying down, to respond and excoriate O’Malley and brand him a ‘hater.’ This is why no one was surprised to see ‘Suga’ call out Topuria after defending his bantamweight title for the first time at UFC 299 six months ago. But ‘El Matador’ almost immediately turned down the call-out, suggesting O’Malley fight Dvalishvili first.

“Suga, congrats.. Was a beautiful performance! There is a fight chasing you with Merab.. Get that done first,” Topuria tweeted after O’Malley’s spectacular, one-sided victory over Marlon ‘Chito’ Vera.

But why did Topuria turn down the bout despite it potentially being one of the biggest fights in the UFC at the moment? Well, because ‘El Matador’, who is originally from Georgia, like Dvalishvili, and counts ‘The Machine’ as one of his close friends, didn’t want his friend to be passed over for the title shot he poured his blood, sweat, and tears for. However, since both O’Malley and Topuria have become champions this year and are only starting on their journey as champions, their fight is one that has a good chance of materializing, albeit sometime down the line. What do you think about Sean O’Malley’s comments about Dvalishvili?