Sean O’Malley wants it on the record that he never passed on Payton Talbott. The former UFC bantamweight champion shot down Talbott’s claim that the two were in talks to fight at UFC Freedom 250 in June, and he did it while dressed as Talbott.
“I’m here to fcking address these rumors that I got offered Payton Talbott for the White House,” O’Malley said in a video shared by Championship Rounds. “That is just absolutely bullsht.”
He followed that up on his Instagram story with a reminder of who he’s been in there with. “4 out of the last 7 fights have been against three of the greatest bantamweights of all time,” O’Malley wrote. “Ain’t ducking no one.”
The whole thing started before UFC 332, when Talbott said a White House matchup with O’Malley had been discussed and hinted that O’Malley was the one who said no. Talbott then gave the story a much bigger platform on Saturday in Salt Lake City, where he stopped Deiveson Figueiredo by TKO in Round 1 of the co-main event and called out O’Malley afterward. MMA Junkie described the finish as dominant, and it got the boss talking too. Boxingnews.com ran a piece on Dana White’s reaction to the performance, so the win registered at the very top of the company.
Talbott is now 12-1 overall and 6-1 inside the UFC. Beating Figueiredo in the first round is a serious line on any resume, since the Brazilian is a former UFC champion who has spent years sharing the cage with the elite at flyweight and bantamweight. A clean first-round stoppage over someone like that is how a contender stops being a prospect.
O’Malley (20-3 MMA, 12-3 UFC) is coming off his own stoppage, a second-round TKO of Aiemann Zahabi on the White House card. That was the event Talbott says he could have been on. So we have two bantamweights coming off finishes, one of them a former champ with a huge following and the other a rising name who just ran through a legend, and one of them is publicly accusing the other of running.
No fight between them has been announced, and neither man’s post-fight comments pointed to a booking in the works.
My take: O’Malley dressing up as Talbott to deny the rumor is the funniest way he could possibly have answered it, and it also tells you he’s paying attention. You don’t put on a costume for someone you’ve never thought about. Talbott’s version of the Freedom 250 talks and O’Malley’s version can’t both be true, and we may never find out who’s right. That matters less than what Saturday proved. Talbott has the record and the Figueiredo stoppage to back up a callout, and O’Malley’s “ain’t ducking no one” line holds up just fine when you look at his last seven opponents. Book it, and let them settle the costume beef with gloves on.
