Sean O’Malley just didn’t lose his 135lbs crown to Merab Dvalishvili—he became the Georgian juggernaut’s highlight reel. ‘The Machine’ dominated ‘Suga’ in their UFC 306: Noche title clash last year. Not only did the Georgian powerhouse take down ‘Suga’ often and maul him there in a one-sided decision win, but he even kissed and taunted the rainbow-haired striker to establish an alpha position. Add some showboating and we had a recipe full of thrill and fun for the viewers, but nothing but embarrassment for the former champ.

Everyone knew ‘Suga’ was nowhere as good a grappler as ‘The Machine’. But the gulf in their ground game was the size of Mt Everest, which did surprise many. But, with the duo set to rematch at UFC 316 on June 7, it seems O’Malley has learned from his mistakes and is going all out to prepare for Dvalishvili’s grappling.

“Today, I grappled more. Just today, just this morning practice that I had. I grappled more today than I did last fight camp for Merab. And I know that sounds like ‘meh’ [but] we did seven six-minute rounds today grappling hard– hard, hard. Picking the hardest guys just straight grappling today. And I wasn’t able to do that once last camp,” O’Malley told Ariel Helwani on the latter’s show on YouTube.

But why? After all, it’s not like ‘Suga’ didn’t know ‘The Machine’ would try to take him down. Then why didn’t he practice his grappling like a madman for their first clash? Well, many would think it may have been hubris. After all, ‘Suga’ has a fantastic takedown defense, and had already beaten Aljamain Sterling, another world-class grappler without much trouble to win the title in 2023. But, no, actually, it is for another, more surprising reason. O’Malley was injured and got to know about it 10 weeks ahead of the clash. “I mean [I had] a torn labrum, everyone feels tears in their labrum different, there’s different levels of tears,” he revealed.

It seems the former champ had this injury before the camp or during it, which prevented him from really working on his grappling the first time around. But wait, wasn’t O’Malley positively raving about how good of a camp he had in the lead-up to UFC 306? Was he lying then, or is he lying now? Well, ‘Suga’ answered that question too, and gave some pretty good reasons for why he did so.

Sean O’Malley reveals the reality of his UFC 306 camp

“Everything’s going really good. When you’re this close to a fight, you’re this healthy, it just, it’s hard to believe it’s true but it is true,” then 135lbs champ Sean O’Malley told ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith a couple of days before his UFC 306 clash against Dvalishvili. This, as you will notice is in very sharp contrast to what O’Malley told Helwani in the aforementioned interview. “That last camp was not a great camp,” ‘Suga’ complained.

According to the former champ, he was hiding his injury in the lead-up to the fight to try and hype up the fight and make sure excited fans buy the PPV. “It was great for what I was able to do. And I’m obviously not gonna, in the lead up to the fight [gonna say]. I haven’t been able to train very hard… But right now I literally grappled more today than I did that entire last camp. I know I can wrestle than I’ve shown in that last fight. It was, you know, borderline embarrassing what I was able to do [against Merab Dvalishvili],” he added.

This is something O’Malley would totally do. There is a reason Dana White puts him in the same category as Conor McGregor and Ronda Rousey because he “understands the business and he gets everything.” If hiding an injury before a fight to make sure people stay excited isn’t understanding the business, then what is? So yeah, O’Malley was lying then, but he was doing it selflessly for purely business reasons. What do you think about Sean O’Malley’s revelations about his training regimen for the Merab Dvalishvili rematch?