Merab Dvalishvili delivered one of his most dominant performances inside the Octagon on Saturday night, submitting Sean O’Malley to retain the bantamweight world title at UFC 316.
The opening round saw Dvalishvili seemingly outstrike O’Malley and land a nice takedown that put him in top control. To O’Malley’s credit, he managed to fight his way back up and avoided hitting the mat throughout the second stanza. Despite that, it appeared that ‘The Machine’ was landing the more impactful strikes through the first 10 minutes.
After a relatively close second, Dvalishvili was ready to take things to the mat almost immediately, shooting in for a takedown and sending ‘Sugar’ crashing to the mat.