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“He’s 5’3.” I’m 6’4.” He don’t want that fight.”
Sean O’Malley thinks he’s in Cody Garbrandt’s head and that the former UFC bantamweight champion is avoiding a fight with him.
Both men have been jawing at each other on social media for the past few weeks, but O’Malley believes Garbrandt was trying to prevent the situation from escalating because the latter ‘don’t want that fight’.
Speaking to MMA Fighting’s Damon Martin ahead of his co-headlining bantamweight bout against Marlon Vera at UFC 252, ‘Suga’ explained why Garbrandt doesn’t want to fight him.
“I don’t think he wants to fight me,” O’Malley said. “I might be a little biased … I don’t think Cody wants to fight me.
“I think he sees that fight, I’m long, I’m tall, I’m accurate, I throw straight punches, he throws hooks. He’s 5’3.” I’m 6’4.” He don’t want that fight.”
“I think I’ve been in his head,” he added. “I think he probably watched my fight with Jose Quinonez because we didn’t have any beef back then but I bet he was thinking ‘I’m going to avoid that fight’ back then.
“Then I knock out Eddie [Wineland] and he knocks out [Raphael] Assuncao but like I said, I think I said it on a podcast the other day, I respect Cody a lot. He got knocked out not once, not twice, he got knocked out three times in a row and then he comes back and fights a tough guy like Assuncao and he got the job done.”
The UFC recently announced that Garbrandt would be moving down to 125 pounds to take on newly-crowned flyweight champ Deiveson Figueiredo at UFC 255, but O’Malley still has the former in his crosshairs.
Before there’s any more trash talk, however, O’Malley must first get past Vera at UFC 254. The blockbuster PPV, which features a headlining trilogy bout between Stipe Miocic and Daniel Cormier, will take place this Saturday, Aug. 15 at the UFC APEX facility in Las Vegas.