The stage was set for Sean O’Malley to take another step up and become a mega-star at UFC 306. Coming off a dominant title defense over Marlon ‘Chito’ Vera at UFC 299, the rainbow-haired striker was set to face Merab Dvalishvili on the UFC’s most memorable card at ‘The Sphere’ in Las Vegas. Alas, ‘The Machine’ lived up to his moniker and poured cold water on O’Malley’s hype.
The Georgian dominated ‘Suga,’ taking him down at will, and playing with him there. Although O’Malley had his moments, Dvalishvili’s relentless pressure and suffocating grappling were too much for him. The result was an incontrovertible, unanimous decision for ‘The Machine.’ And to hear O’Malley tell it, he almost knew he was going to lose that fight about ten days before it, because of some horror-movie type bad omens.
“I randomly got this owl tattoo on my chest. I had a s—– tattoo right here, and I didn’t like it… It was the Petr Yan fight, I sat and I watched the sunset, and like this owl came and flew and stayed on this or was sitting on this wood thing by me, and I was like, ‘What the f—.’ I was so scared to look up what that meant because I thought it was bad. Yeah, well. I looked it up, it’s really, it was good luck,” O’Malley said on the ‘Full Send Podcast.’
“But owls have been coming in and out of my life in a weird way… There’s, I have a bunch of owls that live in these trees around me, so I see them quite often. Ten days before the Merab fight, it was a dead owl in my driveway. And I was like, ‘That, that can’t be good.’ And I was like… I didn’t want to think about that. And it sounds crazy, but I was like, ‘f—.’ I just didn’t feel like I was supposed to win that f—— fight,” the 30-year-old added.
Sean O’Malley can’t shake the strange energy he gets from the owls living around him:
“I randomly got an owl tattoo on my chest. It was the first Petr Yan fight. I sat outside, watched the sunset, and an owl came and flew and sat on the branch by me. I was so scared to look… pic.twitter.com/vmqJ4QYBHt
— Red Corner MMA (@RedCorner_MMA) May 30, 2025
Indeed, seeing a dead owl is considered a bad omen in many cultures. As far back as the Roman Empire, a dead owl was seen as portending death and other negative events. Fighting at the highest level is as much mental as physical. And if O’Malley even subconsciously believed that he wasn’t meant to win the Dvalishvili fight going into it, well, he had already lost half the battle.
But along with the mental stuff, there was some real physical stuff, too, which affected Sean O’Malley’s UFC 306 performance. And with their rematch set for UFC 316 next weekend, a healthy Suga is sure he can beat ‘The Machine’ this time around.
Sean O’Malley injured his hip before UFC 306
“I got surgery. It was weird scheduling surgery for after a fight and still making the walk. To be honest, in the fight, I didn’t feel like it was much of a big deal as it was the preparation leading up to the fight,” ‘Suga’ told Kevin Iole in a recent interview.
O’Malley maintains that he was injured going into UFC 306. ‘Suga’ revealed after the fight that he injured his hip ten weeks before the fight, and still fought since he didn’t want to let the fans down. However, as you can imagine, that compromised his ability to deal with the relentless cardio and grappling machine that is Dvalishvili.
“I wasn’t able to do what needs to be done to fight someone like Merab Dvalishvili, and that’s wrestle. Wrestle, grapple, wrestle, grapple, wrestle, grapple every day for 12 weeks. That’s what I should have done last fight camp, but just wasn’t able to. I was lucky to get one grappling session in a week last camp,” he added.
And with him being healthy going into the rematch, O’Malley is “more confident than ever” that he can beat Dvalishvili this time around. Hopefully, there would be no ill omens like a dead owl to shatter his confidence. What do you think about Sean O’Malley’s revelations about feeling like he was meant to lose to Merab Dvalishvili at UFC 306?
The post Sean O’Malley Opens Up About Bad Omen Involving Owls Before Loss to Merab Dvalishvili at Noche UFC Sphere appeared first on EssentiallySports.
