Merab Dvalishvili has the greatest battle of his profession when he headings Noche UFC at the Sphere on September 14th versus bantamweight champ Sean O’Malley.

Dvalishvili is still tight with his long time group at Serra-Longo in New York, however given that relocating to Las Vegas he’s been training out of Syndicate mixed martial arts under head coach John Wood. And while Wood is unquestionably striving on Merab’s capability to hang with a striker of O’Malley’s pedigree, he’s not aiming to re-invent the Georgian into something he’s not.

“I always, as a coach, look at the things that make Sean Sean and what we need to do to get around it,” Wood informed Red Corner MIXED MARTIAL ARTS. “And I never wanna overlook what got Merab to the dance, what brought Merab into this fight.”

“We have to try and keep those things in check, and not lose ourselves,” he continued. ”’Oh, we need to go find out conventional boxing. We need to do these things to take on O’Malley.’ Because that’s how we’re gonna get knocked out.”

So what is Wood’s objective when dealing with the advancement of Merab Dvalishvili?

“Merab is a crazy man, we’ve just started to make him a technical crazy man,” Wood stated. “Sean, there’s always holes in everybody’s game. If you’re really good at this, it opens up this. If you’re really good at countering that, it opens up this. It might take us a few more times to get where we need to get, but we’re gonna get there.”

“We’ve never seen Sean get pressured enough to where he breaks. But when you start to pressure him, there is a level of he does get tired. He does start to get a little whatever, but he’s very composed. He’s a world champion for a reason, so it’s not like you can pressure Sean and he just goes to s—. But if Merab can do Merab?”

All Dvalishvili needs to do is prevent getting knocked out like his pal and training partner Aljamain Sterling.

“We’ve got a guy in here right now that’s a world champion striker who is a sniper just like O’Malley,” Wood stated. “He’s built like him, doing things like him. There’s a lot of really good strikers [at Syndicate]. I’m not saying he is O’Malley, but we’ve got a lot of guys that can emulate that. I don’t think anybody out there can emulate what Merab does, the chaos that he brings.”

“Every fight since he’s been here at the gym, he’s getting better,” Wood evaluated. “And he’s learning how to control and use his weapons properly. So Sean’s very good. There’s very few holes. But there’s definitely things we can capitalize on that we will capitalize on.”