Herb Dean’s activity in the UFC 306 main event didn’t go unnoticed by Aljamain Sterling.
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.
