UFC President Dana White is ready to take Sean O’Malley to the next level.
That will require “Sugar” to hold up his end of the bargain and defeat rough-and-tumble bantamweight veteran Pedro Munhoz at the UFC 276 pay-per-view (PPV) event this Sat. night (July 2, 2022) inside T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada.
After that? Nothing but Top 10 matchups.
“For O’Malley, when you think about it, we were just talking earlier about how nasty every one of these divisions are in the UFC right now,” White told Yahoo Sports. “Absolute killers in the Top 15. So O’Malley wins this fight this weekend. He beats Pedro Munhoz. That breaks him into the top 10. Then you’re looking at guys like Song Yadong, Rob Font, Merab (Dvalishvili), (Marlon) Vera again, Cory Sandhagen. I mean, (Jose) Aldo….”
Aldo fights Dvalishvili at UFC 278 in October.
O’Malley, 27, cut his teeth on Season 1 of White’s “Contender Series” back in summer 2017 and now stands at 7-1 under the UFC banner (15-1 overall). The power-punching “Sugar” is coming off three straight victories, all by way of knockout.
Munhoz (19-7) has dropped four of his last five.