UFC bantamweight champion Sean O’Malley and his long-time coach, Tim Welch, have come through their careers alongside one another.
Due to the fact that they have worked as a team for such a long time, they have a great working relationship that allows both of them to excel in their roles.
Welch has spent the past few months helping to prepare his fighter for UFC 306 this Saturday night, where “Suga” takes on Merab Dvalishvili.
On a recent podcast appearance, Welch spoke about a technique they use when helping the 135-pound champ to become familiar with how their opponents react to different scenarios.
Tim Welch Reveals Scouting Technique For Sean O’Malley’s Opponents
On The BrendenSchmitty Show, Welch explained how a fighter in their gym named TJ is crucial to helping break down O’Malley’s opponents.
He explained how TJ helps to produce detailed reports of what and how Dvalishvili acts in instances where he’s shooting for takedowns, responding to strikes from different stances and recovering from being hurt.
The added trick that helps to translate this information to O’Malley in his training is by breaking these reactions into short clips – and memes – so that they can be constantly replayed, meaning that “Suga” can pick them up even faster.
Taking these patterns and making them into a part of their training and drills allows O’Malley to know what his opponent will do before they even do it.
“What does he do after he gets rocked and hurt like when Marlon hurt him or Henry hurt him? What does he do? Where’s his head at? What does he do? And he breaks down all these things and turns them into little GIFs or like memes so he can watch that and then it can structure the pads and the knockout shots around that… and then just having Sean rep it and rep it and rep it and then try to hit it in sparring.”
