Array
The Sphere, Las Vegas’ transformational new masterpiece, stole the show Saturday night at UFC 306, but Merab Dvalishvili put on a performance not to be forgotten in capturing the bantamweight championship with a unanimous decision over Sean O’Malley.
The judges scored it 49-46, 48-47 and 48-47 in favor of Dvalishvili (18-4), a 33-year-old from the country of Georgia. He used a ground-and-pound attack to control most of the action against O’Malley (18-2).
O’Malley, 29, who lives in Phoenix, was a slight -125 favorite at BetMGM Sportsbook.
Valentina Shevchenko reclaimed the women’s flyweight championship with all three judges awarding her a 50-45 victory over Alexa Grasso in the co-main event.
This was the third consecutive meeting between the two after Grasso took Shevchenko’s belt in the first match. The second was a draw.
The third one wasn’t closer, with the 36-year-old Shevchenko (24-4-1) using a ground-and-pound strategy to win all three rounds over 31-year-old Grasso (16-4-1) on the judges’ cards.
“It’s so huge,” said Shevchenko, who is from Kyrgyzstan. “It like a dream come true fighting in the Sphere.”
This show at the Sphere was unlike any show in the UFC’s history, taking full advantage of the 160,000-square-foot high-definition LED screen to create an outer-space type feel as the pay-per-view portion of the card was about to begin.
