Sean O’Malley is establishing himself as the king of the Bantamweight division.
“Sugar” likes his options going forward after a successful first title defense as Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) champion against Marlon “Chito” Vera at UFC 299 this past weekend (March 9, 2024). O’Malley, 29, avenged the only loss of his 20-fight career (18-1, 1 no contest) with his unanimous decision win over Vera (watch highlights).
Before he secured his most recent victory, O’Malley had toyed with the idea of getting into the boxing world with mentions of matches against top pound-for-pound boxers, Gervonta Davis and Ryan Garcia. However, O’Malley is starting to think even bigger than those potential match ups.
“I just think mentally that kid is not where he needs to be,” O’Malley said of Garcia on The MMA Hour. “We’ll see how he looks against Devin Haney and kind of go from there. I feel like an MMA fight is just so unrealistic. There’s zero percent chance he would ever even make it to that fight.
“It would talk him one MMA session, one wrestling day, one jiu-jitsu [day], with anybody who knows anything for him to realize, ‘Okay, never mind. This is a bad idea,’” he continued. “If anything would happen, it would be boxing. I don’t even know if I want a build up to that kind of fight with where his head’s at right now. There’s big fights still up there. Floyd [Mayweather’s] still kicking. Floyd’s still running around the boxing room. I keep going out there and do what I’m doing, I might just skip Ryan, I might skip Gervonta and go straight to the big dog.”
Mayweather, 47, retired from professional boxing after the 50th win of his undefeated career when he scored a 10th round technical knockout against Conor McGregor in August 2017. The all-time great boxer has since competed exclusively in exhibition bouts where he’s gone 3-0 and 1 no contest along with three no decisions.
For complete UFC 299 results and play-by-play, click HERE.