Much like former welterweight king Kamaru Usman, UFC veteran Chael Sonnen isn’t buying the ‘gimmick’ fight between Ryan Garcia and Sean O’Malley either. Usman recently weighed in on his thoughts about a possible Garcia vs O’Malley fight, asking ‘Suga’ to focus on UFC. Well, the root cause for these opinions is the fact that the bantamweight champion had preliminary discussions with the UFC brass for a future boxing matchup with Ryan Garcia.
Speaking on ESPN’s ‘Good Guy/Bad Guy’ podcast, former UFC fighter Chael Sonnen dropped some major revelations, sharing his thoughts on the match-up. While on the show, he also exposed the dark truth of crossover bouts. Citing examples from the McGregor-Mayweather and the Fury-Ngannou bout, Sonnen said,
“I have personally never lived through anything that was, where the truth was mistold more than that fight(McGregor vs Mayweather). Those guys did not make the money they pretended to, it did not do the pay-per-view they pretended to, they begged to do a rematch and the benefactor writing the cheque absolutely was not going to do it again. And I only tell you that, it’s not like this is a great idea, we tried to do it with Tyson Fury and Francis Ngannous and it bombed!”
Well, it was Conor McGregor who shook up the world in 2017 when he went toe to toe with boxing’s best Floyd Mayweather in an epic crossover event. In fact, the Irish MMA star stepped on the gas and took the fight to the undisputed, undefeated boxer, keeping the pace for all ten rounds. This fight earned Mayweather a whopping $275 million. Not to mention McGregor’s paycheck of $100 million, becoming one of the highest-grossing gates in history.
While the recent Tyson Fury vs Francis Ngannou’s did not reach that height, Sonnen believes that the numbers that come out are part of a false narrative. After he disapproved of such crossovers, Sonnen further advised O’Malley about his future.
Chael Sonnen gives O’Malley better options in the UFC before the ‘gimmick match’
Truth be told, what the veteran says makes a lot of sense. Before O’Malley goes after the money fight with Garcia, he needs to defend his UFC belt a few times more. ‘Suga’ would then be able to convince the MMA community that he is not just a fluke. Maybe running it back with Petr Yan or defending his title against Umar Nurmagomedov seems like a better option or he can go up to featherweight and prove his mettle.
In this way, he can cement his legacy in the UFC echelon as a pound-for-pound best and, at the same time, build up on the Garcia fight. ‘The American Gangster’said,
““What are they fighting for? What title are they fighting for? What weight class is that? Is it even interesting, I don’t know, man. I like what (Sean) O’Malley does, I want to see O’Malley vs (Umar) Nurmagomedov after he gets done with Merab (Dvalishvili) just by example. I like O’Malley calling out guys in different weight classes, maybe you know going up to 145 and start talking about these conversations and Ryan Garcia, man I don’t really get it.”
While Sonnen made it clear that he would watch a possible Garcia-O’Malley bout, he still isn’t convinced of what they are actually fighting for. After all, they are two athletes from different sports.
