Sean O’Malley has made his peace with the ugliest way to win a title fight. Talking about a shot at bantamweight champion Petr Yan, O’Malley said his plan is to bank every round, then admitted he’ll take the belt however it comes: by knockout, by decision, or by a result the internet screams was a robbery.
The clip circulated Monday through Red Corner MMA, which framed it as O’Malley simply wanting his UFC belt back. He walked through the math of a five-round fight out loud: “I’ve got to make sure I win that first round and then the second round, and then I’ve got to make sure I win the third round and the fourth round.” After that came the punchline about being perfectly happy with a robbery.
O’Malley had already staked his claim earlier Monday in an appearance via Michael Bisping’s channel, shared on X by Dovy. “There’s not even a debate. I’m next,” O’Malley said, adding that it was only a question of when and where.
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Where Yan stands
Yan (20-5 MMA, 12-4 UFC) is coming off the best fight of his career, or at least the most exhausting. At UFC 333 on Oct. 24, he beat Merab Dvalishvili (21-5 MMA, 14-3 UFC) by unanimous decision to take a 2-1 lead in their trilogy. MMA Junkie named it its Fight of the Month for October.
The details matter for anyone trying to beat him. Yan dropped the first two rounds, according to MMA Junkie’s account, then figured out Dvalishvili’s timing, stuffed takedowns down the stretch and wobbled him with a combination in Round 5. Dvalishvili set takedown-attempt records and still couldn’t hold him off.
Yan didn’t exactly hand-pick his next opponent afterward. “Give me Song Yadong, give me King Kong! Give me anybody! Just make the weight, and I will take you down,” Yan said through an interpreter to Daniel Cormier in the cage. So O’Malley has a name competing with his on the champion’s own wish list, and Song Yadong isn’t going away just because O’Malley says there’s no debate.
No fight has been booked, and none of the coverage includes a date or a venue.
Sal’s take
I’ve cashed tickets on fights I thought my guy lost, and I didn’t mail the money back either, so I’m not going to clutch pearls over O’Malley saying the quiet part. A belt won on a bad card spends the same as one won on a good one. The part of his quote that interests me is the round-by-round arithmetic, because that’s exactly the arithmetic Dvalishvili had in hand against Yan. Up two rounds, record-setting takedown volume, and he still left without the belt because Yan got stronger as the fight went on. If O’Malley gets this booking, the number I’m watching is his output in Rounds 4 and 5. Anyone banking early rounds against this version of Yan is betting the champion fades, and on Oct. 24 he did the opposite.
