UFC Champ Sean O'Malley Picks Next Fight, Sends Blunt Message to Challengers
Newly minted UFC bantamweight champion "Sugar" Sean O'Malley has made it known that he'd like to fight Marlon "Chito" Vera in his first title defense. O'Malley's defeat to Vera is something he vehemently disagrees with, and he'd like to stamp out the controversy once and for all.
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O'Malley appeared on the September 5 episode of "Believe You Me" with Michael Bisping, where he discussed his next opponent. However, before talking about "Chito", O'Malley dismissed Merab Dvalishvili as his next challenger:
"[If it's just like] who's the next guy in line by ranking, yeah, it's Merab [Dvalishvili]. I'm the champ, I want [the Chito fight], let's see what happens.
"...I know what I want, I want the biggest fights. I wanna make a lot of money and I wanna do pay-per-views. So that kind of carries on to what I want next."
O'Malley went on to discuss his motives for a rematch with Vera:
"Let's make sure everyone knows I'm not going [after] Chito because he's the biggest name, because he doesn't carry much of a draw - no offense - he might be a bigger name than Merab or Cory [Sandhagen].
"--- If you wanna look at someone [for how to] not emulate your career or sell a fight or anything, follow Cory he will do a great job at that.
"...The only reason a Chito fight is such a big deal is just because of that controversial fight. So that's why that fight's big."
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Sean O'Malley Sends Blunt Message to Ilia Topuria
One future matchup fans have been entertaining is a showdown between O'Malley and featherweight contender Ilia Topuria.
Ilia Topuria
UFC
The two traded Tweets after O'Malley's title victory. Topuria told O'Malley to "keep rising up" so that they may one day share the octagon. "Sugar" replied, "I have risen. Your turn to rise up."
Their small spat concluded with O'Malley telling Topuria to get past Alexander Volkanovski. Topuria hit back telling O'Malley to beat Dvalishvili, "so sit and wait like the good little dog you are."
During his August 31 podcast episode on YouTube, O'Malley cleared the air, remarking that "It's funny Ilia thinks he's in the position to decide."
O'Malley has plenty of immediate options with Vera, Sterling, Dvalishvili and Sandhagen. It'll likely be some time before we see a matchup with him and a former featherweight.
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