Sean O’Malley thinks he and Payton Talbott are headed for the same cage sooner or later. MMA Sucka reported that the former UFC bantamweight champion called a fight with Talbott an eventuality, the kind of matchup he expects the division to produce down the line.
The report gives no timeline for a Talbott fight, and O’Malley’s own words this week point somewhere else entirely. His focus is Petr Yan.
Yan and Merab Dvalishvili just fought for the bantamweight title, and O’Malley spent part of the week praising both men. “We’re super lucky to be able to watch two guys fighting for that title,” he said, in comments Ariel Helwani shared on X. He gave Yan the edge on pure skill and gave Dvalishvili credit for finding ways to win. “I was honored to watch that fight.”
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Then came the post-fight interview, where Daniel Cormier raised Song Yadong as a possible next opponent for Yan and left O’Malley out. O’Malley didn’t hide his irritation. “DC, I don’t know what he’s thinking. I beat Song like 6 months ago. I should be next for the title, I don’t care,” he said, in a clip posted by @DovySimuMMA.
That cooled off fast. O’Malley told Helwani that Cormier reached out. “DC messaged me on Instagram. He said, ‘Hey, I do think that you should fight for the title,’” O’Malley said. The two talked by phone the following night, and O’Malley described the call plainly: “It was good. It was cordial.” He admitted he’d once felt Cormier carried a bias against him early in his career, said he no longer feels that way, and gave the broadcaster some slack. “At the end of the day, commentating is a hard job. You’re not always gonna say the right thing.”
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The history makes the Yan fight easy to sell. O’Malley owns a win over Yan that Helwani called controversial, and both men have beaten Song. Helwani wrote on X that O’Malley is the fight to make for Yan, without question, and the biggest fight available right now.
O’Malley also believes his frame changes the math against Yan. “I think I’m a tough stylistic matchup for Petr Yan,” he said. He was careful to say Yan isn’t afraid of him. “I don’t think he’s scared. I don’t think he’ll duck me.” He did point out that he’s built nothing like Song or Dvalishvili. “I’m a big guy.”
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My take: the order matters here. Yan versus O’Malley 2 has a disputed first fight, a shared Song connection and a belt on the line, so that one books itself. Talbott can wait for his turn. If O’Malley calls it an eventuality, Talbott has every reason to treat that as an open invitation and go make himself impossible to ignore.
