Off the back of another loss at UFC 316, Sean O’Malley has now been tied to another difficult stylistic matchup — as he eyes a potential end-of-year return to the Octagon.
O’Malley, who took on the incumbent bantamweight best, Merab Dvalishvili, over the weekend, came unstuck once more. Failing to avenge just his second professional defeat, the Montana striker was finished for just the second time in his career, albeit in rather one-sided fashion.
Dropping an eventual third-round north-south submission loss to the Georgian, O’Malley is now staring down the barrel of a two-fight losing skid for the first time in his impressive Octagon tenure. But to boot, a rather difficult route back to the top — at least while Dvalishvili holds the reins at bantamweight.
Linked with a showdown against common foe and former champion, Petr Yan in a return, O’Malley has also been mentioned as an opponent for Brazilian favorite, Deiveson Figueredo, next.
Furthermore, a pairing against recent title chaser, Umar Nurmagomedov, has been broached to boot — with the Montana native sure to face another massive threat to his wrestling defense, especially if they eventually face off.
Targeting a potential six-to-seven-month layoff off the back of his recent setback, O’Malley confirmed plans to enter the Octagon by December at the very latest.
“The division’s gonna play out over the next few months,” O’Malley said on his podcast this week. “We’ll see where it goes. December seems like it would make sense for me to get back in there. Six or seven months.”
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Nurmagomedov ripped O’Malley’s first loss to Merab
Having come unstuck for the first time in his combat sports tenure back in January, Nurmagomedov was less than pleased with O’Malley’s defeat to their common foe, just months before.
Asked for his thoughts on O’Malley’s Noche UFC loss to the Tbilisi force, a candid Nurmagomedov really didn’t hold back.
“He’s a bum,” Umar said of O’Malley during an interview with Submission Radio.
“He doesn’t do what he has to. He was running, I don’t know. If you’re champion, you can’t fight like that and come inside the cage and fight like that. He went out this fight, he [wasn’t] even tired. He left the cage like fresh. What are you doing, man? You have to go ahead and do everything what you can do for defense of your title, ” Umar had added, noting that O’Malley was scared.
