Herb Dean’s activity in the UFC
306 main event didn’t go unnoticed by Aljamain
Sterling.
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The UFC 306 main event clash between Sean
O’Malley and Merab
Dvalishvili on Sept. 14 at the Sphere in Las Vegas started off
bizarrely, though that wasn’t necessarily due to Dean. Dvalishvili
suddenly stopped fighting in the opening seconds, frantically
pointing at O’Malley coach Tim Welch in
the corner.
Dean issued a stern warning to Dvalishvili for taking the liberty
to stop the action by himself. Meanwhile, Welch, who has a history
of shouting instructions to O’Malley’s opponents, also received a
warning for excessive coaching. However, Dean began attracting
attention, including those of the commentators, thank to his
repeated intervention as the fight progressed.
Despite a lopsided grappling display from Dvalishvili, Dean
inexplicably kept calling for more action, threatening to stand
them up even as “The Machine” kept working continuously. Like the
vast majority of the MMA world, Sterling also saw Dean intervening
more than necessary in the UFC 306 main event. Sterling noted that
historically, exchanges marked with much more inactivity have been
allowed to go on, perhaps even at times when the referee would have
done better to interfere.
“I definitely think he interjected way more than he should have,”
Sterling told Submission Radio. “Merab would just get a takedown,
he’s landing knees, he’s landing punches and [Dean’s] like, ‘Work,
or I’m gonna stand you up.’ I was so confused. Because we’ve seen a
lot of other previous grappling scenarios, and I don’t think we’ve
heard the ref getting anywhere near as vocal. And in some of those
other fights there’s probably way more situations where they could
have actually stepped in to say something a little bit more. And I
don’t think Merab’s fight in any of those positions was anything
like that. So it seemed like the political debate where one guy is
fighting two moderators and his opponent.”
Dvalishvili went on earn a dominant unanimous decision win over
O’Malley, avenging Sterling’s title loss to “Sugar” via knockout at
UFC 292 last year. Sterling has since moved up to featherweight,
recording a unanimous decision win over Calvin
Kattar in his divisional debut at UFC 300 this past April. The
former bantamweight champ is now slated to face undefeated Russian
contender Movsar
Evloev at UFC 307
on Oct. 5 at the Delta Center in Salt Lake City, Utah.