Sean O’Malley’s coach slammed Daniel Cormier after UFC 333, according to an MMA Sucka headline, and the specifics of what he said haven’t surfaced in anything I can verify yet. So I won’t put words in his mouth. The surrounding context tells you plenty anyway. By the time O’Malley’s camp took its shot on Sunday, Cormier had already spent the night in a public fight with Dominick Reyes on X and watched O’Malley openly scratch his head over a postfight interview question. That’s three separate camps with complaints about one broadcaster off one card. Of those complaints, the O’Malley side’s is the strongest, and it has nothing to do with tone.
The Reyes Blowup Was Mostly About One Word
Start with the fight, because it deserved better than what followed. Reyes needed under three minutes Saturday in Abu Dhabi to crack Azamat Murzakanov with a head kick, then put him away with that left hand he’s built a career on. That’s two straight wins for him, and a much sharper night than his split decision over Johnny Walker in April, which MMA Fighting fairly described as listless.
Then Reyes went to X. As Championship Rounds captured it, he asked who “actually likes hearing low iq hater ass DC” and signed off by throwing the word kid right back at him. The issue was Cormier calling him kid on the broadcast. Cormier answered that he doesn’t use the word negatively, that he praises Reyes when he earns it, and that he would tell the truth about a performance like the Walker fight too. Reyes escalated. He said Paul Felder had called Cormier out on air for bias and that Cormier laughed it off, and he accused DC of favoring fighters from the Caucasus region. Cormier trains with and is friends with Khabib Nurmagomedov and Islam Makhachev, both from Dagestan, which is where that charge comes from.
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Here’s my problem with Reyes’s case. The bias accusation is serious, and the public evidence he offered amounts to one Felder aside and a laugh. That doesn’t make a case, especially on a night when Cormier was calling Reyes’s win, by Cormier’s own account, possibly the best performance of his career. Reyes seemed to reach a similar place himself. Later in the day he posted that “we are all out here doing our best,” and he included the commentary team in that. Being called kid on a broadcast is irritating. A bias charge needs more than irritation behind it.
The Yan Question Is Where DC Actually Slipped
The O’Malley grievance is different in kind. After UFC 333, Cormier asked Petr Yan about fighting Song Yadong next. O’Malley, who had been very loudly positioning himself for Yan, posted his reaction on his own channel, and Championship Rounds clipped it: “DC, I don’t know what he’s thinking. I beat [Song] like 6 months ago.”
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That’s a fair hit. A cageside interviewer has real influence over who gets booked next, because the question frames the answer and the answer becomes the headline. MMA Fighting was openly asking whether O’Malley was next for Yan before Cormier even got the microphone near him. Offering Yan a fighter that O’Malley says he beat roughly half a year ago steers attention away from the matchup the division was already talking about. You can call it an oversight or you can call it a preference. Either way, the guy sitting in the challenger’s seat has every reason to be annoyed, and so does his coach.
The charitable read is that Cormier wanted Yan to say O’Malley’s name himself, so the call-out would come from the winner. Interviewers do that. I don’t buy it here, because the cleaner way to get that answer is to ask Yan about O’Malley directly and let him run with it. Naming Song puts an alternative on the table that didn’t need to be there.
So my scorecard looks like this. Reyes’s complaint about the word kid is a matter of taste, and his bias charge is unproven. The O’Malley camp’s complaint is about a specific broadcast decision with booking consequences, and the evidence for it is right there on tape. Cormier’s actual job description includes being right about the division. On the bantamweight question, he wasn’t.
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O’Malley, for his part, isn’t waiting on anybody’s framing. He posted a video of himself training in the rain, aimed at Yan: “You’re out there celebrating your victory. I’m training, in the rain.” Then he called it the biggest bantamweight fight in UFC history and said he’s fighting Yan next regardless. If the UFC agrees, there’s a good chance Cormier will be cageside for it, and O’Malley’s corner will be listening to every word.
