Sean O’Malley thinks he is already in the mind of bantamweight champion Petr Yan despite the fact he has only just cracked the top 15 at 135lbs.
O’Malley is quickly becoming one of the most talked-about fighters in MMA. The 25-year-old is riding high off back-to-back knockout wins in 2020. Add in his eccentric personality and love of trash talk and it appears the UFC has a star on their hands. That’s something ‘Suga’ realizes and he thinks the rest of the bantamweight division recognizes it too.
“I’m for sure easily the most talked about guy in the division,” O’Malley told MMA Fighting. “I’m talking a lot of smack about Petr [Yan], Cody, Henry [Cejudo], all these dudes, and they’re all replying. They all know that’s a realistic fight in the future. They’re not taking it as a joke. They know it’s serious business.
As for the newly crowned champion Yan, O’Malley suspects he spends much of his time thinking about a potential match-up between the pair.
“I’m clearly in Petr’s head, or Pete-R, whatever you want to call him. I’m clearly in his head. He’s thinking about me. I think he’s dreaming about me, waking up and asking someone to help him tweet something.”
O’Malley insists nothing is personal and will never become personal. He admires Conor McGregor for taking trash talk to the next level but is hoping to learn from the mistakes ‘Notorious’ made in the lead up to his fight with his bitter rival Khabib Nurmagomedov.
“Nothing’s personal,” he said. “These guys say anything, they can do anything, say anything – nothing’s going to be personal. I do look at the whole, even the social media tweets, as business. Short little people like Petr and Cody and Henry have short man syndrome, and they get angry at things and it’s personal.
“For me, it’s always going to be business. I think Conor [McGregor] was really good at that until the Khabib [Nurmagomedov] fight. I feel like that got too personal, and it played games with him. I definitely learned from that experience with Conor vs. Khabib, I can’t let it get personal. I learn from everyone always, especially guys like Chael [Sonnen], Conor, guys that know how to talk and sell fights.”
Do you agree with Sean O’Malley? Is he already in the mind of UFC bantamweight champion Petr Yan?