Marlon Vera defeated Sean O’Malley at UFC 252 back in Aug. 2020.
“Chito” will look to make it two-zip against “Suga” — and capture the bantamweight crown in the process — when they run it back atop the UFC 299 pay-per-view (PPV) event, locked and loaded for this Sat. night (March 9, 2024) at Kaseya Center in Miami, Florida.
This time, they’ll have an extra two rounds to settle the score.
The promotion recently released the full video replay of their first go-round, which you can now watch in the embedded video above. O’Malley blamed a wonky foot for his UFC 252 performance and later petitioned the Suga State Athletic Commission to overturn his loss.
Now he’s undefeated (in his mind).
“I won the fight,” Vera told ESPN. “Say whatever you want. Cry all you want. I don’t give a f*ck about your feelings. It seems like I won the fight, right? He’ll say he won and the athletic commission scored it for him, I don’t know. But the matter of fact is that the records say I won and I was paid double [show money and win bonus]. He can keep crying.”
“I think it was a best-case scenario — me losing in a fluke way,” O’Malley responded. “I didn’t get pushed too fast after that. If I go out there and beat Chito in 2020, who was next? Would I have been ready for what was next? This fight slowed my career down. Had I beat Chito, I wouldn’t have fought Thomas Almeida next, and that fight is one of my favorite knockouts. A massive, viral knockout.”
For much more on their UFC 299 rematch click here.