Sean has become a household name in MMA even among people who do not follow the sport. A lot of this has to do with his unique and rather odd look, his lanky frame that doesn't seem akin to a world-class fighter, and the fact that he is very mouthy and colorful in his commentary. This doesn't mean that the world of MMA believes the he belongs in the top position though, and this was evident very early on in Vegas betting when he was actually ranked as the underdog in early betting for the upcoming UFC event in Las Vegas where O'Malley and Dvalishvili are scheduled to go 5 rounds.
I don't really have strong opinions that I think anyone should take seriously because I have been incorrect about O'Malley multiple times in his rise to the top. I was one of the guys that said that I thought he was getting easy matchups because Dana White wanted him to be the champ since he brings in the people to the shows in a way that very few others have been able to do. His strikes are more of a volume thing than a power thing and there was one fight not long ago where he struck his opponent so many times that he broke his own hand during the fight (he claimed that he broke both but never provided proof.)
The thing with a fighter like Dvalishvili and I presume the reason why he was initially a favorite in the bookings - although it was just a slight favorite is because of two things: The guy never seems to get tired and he is an excellent wrestler.
Merab's strategy from what I have seen works like this: He stands there and does stand-up boxing / kickboxing with whoever he is against long enough for them to get a false sense of security about how heavy their strikes can be towards him, then he calmly waits for his opponent to get over-zealous with the power of their strikes and then he looks for an opening and swarms with his wrestling. While he normally will shoot for a standard takedown, his low center of gravity enables him to simply pick his opponents up and slam them into the ground. Then he works relentlessly from a down position to eventually ground and pound to victory or get into submission position.
Even though most people who face off against him are very aware of the fact that this is his strategy, he manages to get through anyway. People try to lock him up with a body triangle but because of his cardio this merely slows down the inevitable and he gradually works his way up and pounds away. Keep in mind that if he does get you on the ground and remains in top position for long enough amount of time, even if you prevent any real damage from happening that he is going to win the round on points.
There have been several people that worked very hard on takedown defense and were able to stuff a lot of his attempts only to have him just pick them up and slam them into the mat, achieving top position anyway.
His last six fights (as far as I cared to go back) were all victorious and unfortunately all but one of them were decision victories that were based largely on ground control time. Only one of them was a KO finish.
Sean's path to victory is quite limited here because he likely cannot win on the ground and that is exactly where Merab is going to be trying to put him right from the opening of the bout. Many other people before have felt that they could prevent the wrestler from besting them and they were all wrong. This list includes Henry Cejudo, Jose Aldo, and former champion Petr Yan. So why would Sean be any different?
Well apparently the pundits don't think that he can be, but here is one thing that works in Sean's favor: The exceptionally boring and I would say most boring fighter of all time, Aljamain Sterling was almost entirely a wrestler and grappler who would at time elicit boos from the crowd because he seemed to be trying to win on points by having long stretches of ground control without actually even attempting to submit or KO his opponent. Aljamain went into the bout against O'Malley with the same strategy that he always have of "human backpacking" his opponent and ended up KO'd in spite of it.
One could argue to some degree that Sterling brought this on himself by attempting to win over fans that hated him by standing up more and not shooting for ground game all the time in this match. Regardless, he was always going to revert to that, which he did, and O'Malley had an answer for him and handily defeated him less than 1 minute into the 2nd round. On a funny sidenote, Sterling has changed his name from "Human Backpack" to "Funkmaster" since then in an attempt to help people forget that he is a boring one-trick pony. He started out his next match vs Calvin Kattar by trying to stand up but then realized that wasn't going to work for him and went straight back to shooting for takedowns, bored the fans, and eventually won on points. I'm so pleased that guy is out of the picture now.
I sincerely hope that O'Malley does win this fight because the last thing that UFC needs is another guy that relies heavily on ground game for decision victories. These fights are almost always boring as hell and the fans hate them. Are they effective? Well sure, but that doesn't please the fans and that which displeases the fans doesn't sell tickets.
The fact remains that Merab Dvalishvili really could have the correct tools to dismantle Sean O'Malley and these tools could lead to a really boring 25-minute match at the top of a UFC pay-per-view card. Let's hope that Sean actually does have an answer for it.