“That was not a f-cking poke in the eye. That was brushed up… there’s no way he could not have not continued that fight.”
Sean O’Malley has doubled down on his criticism of Pedro Munhoz by accusing ‘The Young Punisher’ of faking an eye injury to avoid getting knocked out.
Their bantamweight matchup at UFC 276 ended in a controversial No Contest (NC) after O’Malley landed an accidental eye poke in the second round.
Munhoz has since revealed that he suffered a scratched cornea and can’t see properly one week after the fight. However, O’Malley isn’t convinced Munhoz is telling the truth or that he actually poked him in the eye.
‘Suga’ blasted the UFC veteran for robbing him of a highlight-reel finish and looking for an easy way out while he still had the chance.
“He robbed me of a highlight-reel KO that I trained 12 weeks for because I was getting the better of him,” O’Malley said on his BrOMalley Show podcast (h/t Low Kick MMA). “He didn’t want to be on the highlight-reel. He didn’t want to be an Eddie Wineland [and] he didn’t want to be a (Raulian) Paiva. He wanted out while he still could.”
“The second round, barely poked him in the eye. Not enough to stop the fight. I’ve been poked in the eye and I’ve poked someone in the eye. That was not a f****** poke in the eye. That was brushed up… there’s no way he could not have not continued that fight.”
“He wanted out while he still could. He wanted to get another fight in the UFC. I put his lights out, they say, ‘You know what? That might be it. For him, he’s like ‘Well I can get paid here and I can probably get another fight booked.’”
O’Malley feels the damage to Munhoz’ eye was caused by a punch, not an eye poke. But from the footage, it’s difficult to tell.
“The thing he posted about the eye being scratched or whatever, I had multiple people hit me up and say that you can get that from the wind blowing dirt in your eye,” O’Malley said (h/t MMA News). “You can get that same injury. And then he said I poked him twice. So he thought the first one where I punched him in the eye was a poke, that’s the one that swole his left eye shut. That’s the one that really hurt him…”
“When I hit him in the gut earlier and they said it was a nut shot, he held his eye. So he used that low body shot to take time for the eye that I punched.”
Prior to UFC 276, O’Malley was on a three-fight winning streak, with knockout victories over Thomas Almeida, Kris Moutinho, and Raulian Paiva. He is currently #13 in the UFC bantamweight rankings.