Photo by Jeff Bottari/Zuffa LLC
Cody Garbrandt fires back at Sean O’Malley, saying he landed the ‘picture-perfect’ punch against Raphael Assuncao at UFC 250.
Has Cody Garbrandt took the bait?
Earlier this week, Sean O’Malley compared his highlight reel KO of Eddie Wineland at UFC 250 to Cody Garbrandt’s second-round knockout of Raphael Assuncao, with ‘Sugar’ implying that his finish was much more technical.
“There’s levels to striking,” O’Malley said after imitating Garbrandt’s wind-up right hand in a video parody.
i respect this level of pettiness pic.twitter.com/B3m0X9sBV0
— Hektic_One (@hektic_one) June 10, 2020
O’Malley was clearly fishing for a response, and Garbrandt seemed happy to oblige.
Speaking to TMZ Sports in a recent interview, ‘No Love’ fired back at O’Malley by claiming that his KO of Assuncao was ‘way better’ and far more vicious.
“Mine was way better,” Garbrandt said. “Way vicious. My dude couldn’t get up. I knew that as soon as I started that punch, the trajectory of where it was going, the force and the speed, it was going to connect and knock him out. It was a picture-perfect punch and just a nice walk off.”
“[Assuncao is] leap years ahead of any adversary [O’Malley] has ever fought. Hats off to him. He did good, went out there and performed, got a knockout victory … but you can’t compare when you’re fighting the Top 5 in the world.
“[O’Malley has] never fought anybody in the Top 15, so that’s a huge difference when you’re able to starch people like that at each level.”
With Garbrandt’s stunning knockout win over Assuncao, the former UFC bantamweight champion surged four places to #5 in the UFC fighter rankings, reestablishing himself as a top contender in the UFC’s shark tank of a bantamweight division.