O’Malley wants the biggest fights he can get, but they’re all out of reach … for now.
Sean O’Malley spent last Saturday night after UFC 308 imagining what could have been if he’d won his last fight at UFC 306.
O’Malley lost a unanimous decision to Merab Dvalishvili, dropping his bantamweight title after a smothering performance by the Georgian fighter. And because of that loss, he won’t get to fight another Georgian: Ilia Topuria, who just knocked out Max Holloway to confirm his place as the new king of the featherweights.
“God, can you guys imagine if I would have went out there and knocked out Merab?” O’Malley said on his socials. “Ilia just knocked out Max, how big of a superfight that would have been.”
“F—!” he yelled in frustration before calming down.
Sean O’Malley said he’s going to climb the ladder and earn a superfight with Ilia Topuria pic.twitter.com/CHuYvYuVJq
— Happy Punch (@HappyPunch) October 28, 2024
“It’s okay. I’m gonna get it back,” he declared. “We’re gonna climb the ladder, climb back up. I want super fights. I want the biggest f—ing fights out there. And we’ll get that one, one of these days.”
O’Malley will have a tough time landing that Topuria fight even if he goes on a serious run at bantamweight. Topuria is already looking up at lightweight, and has talked about a third title at welterweight some day. If “Suga” wants his shot he’d most likely have to meet “El Matador” at 145.
But Sean and his team are serious about chasing that fight. In a new interview with Submission Radio, his coach Tim Welch confirmed they feel like the bout is right there … if Topuria loses his anticipated rematch against Alexander Volkanovski.
“I don’t think it’s past,” Welch said. “You never know what’s going to happen in the UFC.”
“It’s not impossible that Volkanovski goes out there and beats Ilia Topuria. That’s possible. So you never know. And I do think stylistically, Sean could give Ilia problems. He really could. But Ilia Topuria is a very, very scary fight … you make one mistake with Ilia Topuria and you’re going to be lights out, looking up at the ceiling.”
“That’s a scary, scary fight,” he reiterated. “But I do believe that Sean, with his range and with his speed and with his overall skill set, he could give Ilia problems. I do believe that.”
For now, O’Malley continues to recover from a hip surgery that Welch says kept him from performing his best against Dvalishvili in the Sphere.
“I think [a Merab rematch] is very likely,” he said. “And we fix a couple of things and then that fight is completely different. Especially if we get Sean to 100% where he can go out there and let loose, not be afraid to get taken down and get back up, be able to create a scramble and not worry about his cardio and his hip hurting. I think it’s really likely to happen.”