Sean O’Malley Shares Timeline for UFC Return, Plans to Resume Training in January 2025

Former UFC bantamweight champion Sean O’Malley can not wait to get back in the octagon but he’s been ruled out for a few months due to a hip surgery. This puts him in a weird spot since Merab Dvalishvili has offered him a title rematch in November. But he’s out for about 6-9 months at least.

In a recent podcast episode on YouTube, ‘Suga’ gave fans a timeline of his return and revealed when he can start training again,

“Next three months I’m going to be able to recover and I think I’m gonna be able to start like actually training late December, early January and be back 2026….I want to fight.”

Obviously, the champ was joking about the 2026 return. He has made it clear and repeatedly so, that he will try to get back in the octagon as soon as possible. He wants that Merab rematch and if Umar Nurmagomedov holds the title at the time, ‘Suga’ doesn’t mind getting a load of that smoke as well.

This itch to fight got to him when he saw Alex Pereira’s deadly performance at UFC 307 this past weekend.

‘Sugar‘ then spoke about how entertaining it was to watch two strikers compared to a wrestling matchup in the octagon.

O’Malley falls asleep watching wrestling

O’Malley was watching the UFC 307 event live like the rest of the world where Poatan was once again looking to live up to the hype.

He put on a striking masterclass against Khalil Rountree Jr. who have him the toughest fight of his UFC career.

After watching his performance, in the same YouTube video, O’Malley compared it to how boring it would have been had both fighters had been wrestlers.

“It was such a sweet f*cking fight it got me fired up, got me fired up. Watching that s*it compared to f*cking wrestlers….I do like wrestling, it’s one of my favorite sports to fall asleep to”

Safe to say Sean O’Malley is not a big fan of wrestling, or wrestlers, especially in the octagon. He would rather take the fight on the feet, going toe to toe, rather than on the canvas.

However, MMA is a multi-faceted sport and that is why it is so difficult to excel in it without being a complete fighter. So, no matter how much he procrastinates it, he will have to get better at his ground game if he ever wants to reclaim that bantamweight title,