Sean O’Malley is looking to make a move to the featherweight division. The reason could well be his ongoing bad run in the bantamweight division. The former champ has now lost to Merab Dvalishvili twice in a row. Understandably, he won’t be getting another shot at the title anytime soon.
With all these factors working against him, in his mind, it makes sense to go into a different division. In turn, the move could also throw him a completely new set of challenges. O’Malley does have the size to move up in weight. He is considerably tall for the bantamweight division, so moving up in weight shouldn’t be a problem for him.
However, Dvalishvili’s camp is advising him to stick around at bantamweight. It was none other than ‘The Machine’s’ coach who made this statement in an interview with MMA Today, hosted by Din Thomas and Alan Jouban.
Here’s what Merab’s coach John Wood had to say: “The UFC loves stars, and when the UFC loves somebody who has the capability that he has, honestly Sean’s one knockout away from being right back into the, you know, ‘Oh my god he’s back, the Suga Show’.”
He believes there are still some good fights left for ‘Suga’ at bantamweight. He could run it back with Petr Yan or take on Umar Nurmagomedov next. There’s another part of Merab’s camp that thinks otherwise. His head coach, Ray Longo, had a controversial take regarding O’Malley.
Ray Longo ‘exposes’ Sean O’Malley
Longo is the head coach of the Serra-Longo fight team. Alongside former UFC champion Matt Serra, he has trained 4 UFC fighters to championships, with his most recent success story being Merab Dvalishvili. A respected name in the sport, Longo knows a thing or two about MMA, as his record suggests.
So when he sat down for an interview with Jon Anik and Kenny Florian for their podcast, he spoke about Sean O’Malley, and what he said was shocking to some fans. “O’Malley is obviously super talented, but they did give him guys that are just gonna stand in front of him, that weren’t grapplers,” Longo stated.
He went on to say that ‘Suga’ is now facing the consequences of these ‘easy fights’. “Now you got a guy whose MMA wrestling is off the charts, so now what are you gonna do? You’re gonna correct that in a couple of months?… They’re not doing anything.”
Ray Longo thinks Sean O’Malley was given too easy of a path to the title and that we’re starting to see that now with his recent loses to Merab pic.twitter.com/SBC5Ayvuth
— Anik & Florian Podcast (@AnikFlorianPod) June 12, 2025
Longo does have a point. ‘Suga’ has not fought any pure wrestlers like Merab on his road to the title. And one could argue that Petr Yan is a strong wrestler. But even Yan is nowhere near the kind of pressure Dvalishvili puts on his opponents.
The Serra-Longo head coach believes that it is this lack of exposure to ‘tough fights’ that has cost Sean O’Malley, and there’s an easy fix for this — putting him up against wrestling-dominant fighters.
