Sean O’Malley just ran into a better fighter at last weekend’s UFC 306, according to former champion Aljamain Sterling.

Sterling, the former 135-pound champion who was dethroned by O’Malley last year, has been a longtime friend and training partner of the bantamweight division’s new pacesetter Merab Dvalishvili who authored a five-round unanimous decision to claim the world title.

Speaking afterwards, UFC boss Dana White told the media in Las Vegas that he felt that O’Malley looked ‘flat’ throughout the 25-minute affair during which he was largely unable to uncork his sniping, long-range style of striking.

But discussing the fight on his YouTube channel, as noted by MMA Junkie, Sterling disagreed with White’s assessment of the bout.

“I know people are trying to say that O’Malley looked flat. I think that’s the narrative that Dana was trying to push,” Sterling said. “If I’m being fair, if you look at his fights, his track record of all the guys he’s beaten, they were all punching bags for the most part. … I give credit where due. He was well prepared, but to say he looked flat makes no sense.”

There has been a sense of acrimony between Sterling’s camp and that of O’Malley, with this coming to a head in the opening seconds of the UFC 306 main event after Herb Dean issued a warning to O’Malley’s coach, Tim Welch, and Dvalishvili for comments made at one another. This came after Welch was reported to have ‘coached’ Sterling in the bout with O’Malley last year in an apparent bid to get him to rush into O’Malley’s wheelhouse, where he was swiftly defeated following a striking exchange.

But this wasn’t on Sterling’s mind in the fight’s opening seconds last weekend.

“The opening bell when he’s coming out with those feints, those hip twitches that he does so well where he’s shaking off to the side, shaking off to the other side and then looking for those long strikes, he came out exactly like Conor McGregor did against Khabib,” he said. “Now I gave Merab that same exact look, coming out with the fingers, long, trying to hit the feints and trying to go to the body, trying to go up top.

“Merab finally got his fair shake. He got a fair fight, although O’Malley probably knew about the Sphere fight before Merab did and had more time to prepare,” Sterling said. “When they announced it for Merab from what I remember, they called him, it was exactly eight weeks.

“Now come on, once again we’re trying to put this ball in the court where he (Merab) has to now scramble around like, ‘OK, I’m fighting here. I’ve got to get all these training partners, make sure everything is dialed in.”