Former UFC women’s bantamweight champion Miesha Tate believes Sean O’Malley has all the makings of a superstar and with good reason.
O’Malley continues to rise in popularity as well as the rankings ahead of his bantamweight co-main event meeting with Marlon Vera at UFC 252 this Saturday.
Vera is undoubtedly the toughest fighter he will have faced in his career. With “Sugar” predicting another knockout victory, he will certainly have more believers and shut the doubters up further if he continues at this rate.
And for Tate, O’Malley is a perfect representation of the evolution of the sport.
“He’s one of those guys — he’s the next generation,” Tate said on Fight Nation. “He’s putting more into it than just ‘train harder not smarter.’ That was the old school way to do it. Everybody just trained and fought every day. You see the evolution of the sport continue to grow and I think that Sean O’Malley is that next step.
“He’s the next level. He’s figuring it out. He’s meditating, he’s probably doing yoga, doing all these extra things that are just helping him be a complete person and a complete different kind of fighter.”
Why Is O’Malley So Popular?
Despite it being just his fifth fight in the UFC, O’Malley has already been given a co-main event spot in what is one of the biggest cards of the year.
It’s a testament to just how popular he has become since debuting for the promotion in 2017. But what is the reason for his popularity? The knockouts and undefeated record certainly help, but Tate believes there are other factors.
“I just think he’s unique,” Tate explained. “He has a refreshing fighting style. He fights with careless abandonment, yet he’s calculated and he has a system to the madness. But he’s unpredictable and he’s fun and he can knock people out and he has great interviews and he stands out. I mean, his hair, his tattoos, his personality — he just feels like somebody you want to be invested in. Right? Somebody you want to care about. And people do.
“And he’s fun and he’s exhilarating, and he’s all the things that you would want in a potential star. I think that’s what we see in the making here, that’s what makes him so interesting,” Miesha Tate concluded. “I’d like to see him continue to climb the rankings. Especially if he goes 6-0 which is not an easy thing to do in the UFC at all. He’s undefeated, 12-0 and people love him. He’s got a catchy name, he’s got a refreshing fun style of fighting. He’s just a fun fighter to watch.”
"He's all the things that you would want in a potential star," @MieshaTate and @RyanMcKinnell talk about what makes Sean O'Malley so great and discuss what they want next for him if he gets a win at #UFC252 pic.twitter.com/lKNhN5dDz0
— MMA on SiriusXM (@MMAonSiriusXM) August 12, 2020
"He's all the things that you would want in a potential star,"
Do you agree with Tate about O’Malley?