Daniel Cormier wants Payton Talbott in the cage with Sean O’Malley. O’Malley’s corner is not interested. Bloody Elbow reported Saturday that Tim Welch, O’Malley’s head coach, took issue with Cormier pushing for the matchup. Welch’s argument is that Talbott hasn’t collected enough marquee wins to jump into title contention conversations with an established star like the former bantamweight champion.
Welch sounds like a coach protecting his guy’s place in line, and coaches are paid to do that. He also has a point.
Talbott’s UFC run has been loud. He got past Saaiman and Lima, then beat Cejudo, then stopped Deiveson Figueiredo in his lone 2026 appearance. That Figueiredo win is the one people keep talking about. MMA Mania’s Tim Edwards noted in Friday’s mailbag that it was the first time Figueiredo had been legitimately stopped, since his two previous TKO losses came from an eye injury and a knee injury. Talbott hurt him with clean shots, and that matters.
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The catch is the birth certificates. The same mailbag opened with a reader asking, “Is Payton Talbott really all that or is he just beating up washed old men?” Most of the staff answered somewhere between yes and kind of. Alex Behunin admitted he’d doubted Talbott against Saaiman, Lima and Cejudo and said he was done doubting him, while also conceding that Cejudo and Figueiredo were well past their primes when Talbott beat them. That’s the hole Welch is aiming at. Beating two legends on the back nine of their careers looks great on a highlight reel, but it doesn’t put a ranked contender in their prime on the résumé.
Activity is the other problem. Talbott fought three times in 2025 and only once this year. Ryan Harkness pointed out that nobody can say whether that’s on the UFC or on rising bantamweights who don’t want the fight, but either way, Talbott is in that awkward spot where every booking could be a title eliminator and nobody’s rushing to sign the paperwork. Thomas Myers floated Raul Rosas, whom he slotted at No. 8, as the logical next step before an O’Malley fight in 2027. Edwards mentioned Song and Sandhagen as the kind of names Talbott should be climbing toward.
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So you have Cormier, who loves this fight, and Welch, who sees a prospect trying to skip the line. Both of them are partly right.
My take: I want this fight badly. Talbott’s composure against O’Malley’s swagger would sell itself, and I’m always going to side with the fight people actually want to watch. But Welch isn’t ducking. He’s asking for one more scalp, and I can’t argue with that one. Give Talbott a guy in his prime, Rosas or anyone from that Song and Sandhagen tier, and if he finishes him the way he finished Figueiredo, Welch is out of excuses and DC gets to take his victory lap on the broadcast.
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