Sean O’Malley has finally stopped pushing his callout to make Ilia Topuria his next opponent. As admitted by the bantamweight king, the decision came after “a lot of pushback,” claiming that he was avoiding Merab Dvalishvili, who was anointed recently as his No. 1 contender.
“Sugar” started calling out Topuria even before his UFC 298 title win over Alexander Volkanovski. O’Malley was hoping to make a champ vs. champ fight between him and the Spanish fighter, only for the suggestion to be repeatedly turned down by “El Matador.” After that, UFC announced that it was giving the title shot to Dvalishvili, who defeated Henry Cejudo in a main card bout of UFC 298. Yet, this didn’t stop O’Malley’s interest in Topuria.
Needless to say, fans do not like this plan.
In his recent post on his YouTube channel, the bantamweight champ addressed the matter and announced that he officially accepted “The Machine” as his next challenger.
“Let me start with this: Initially, I was calling for Ilia. I wanted the Ilia fight. It excites me, but I also thought the fans would get excited about it. I got a lot of pushback saying, ‘You’re ducking Merab, Merab is next,’ so Merab is next,” O’Malley said. “Let’s do Merab. I’m telling you guys: I knock Merab out.”
Despite that, O’Malley is still not giving up on his hopes that he’ll soon meet Topuria in the cage. For now, the champ noted that he’ll shift his focus to Dvalishvili, whom he believes improved a lot as a fighter.
“The Ilia fight can happen someday,” O’Malley said. “Ilia keeps doing his thing, I keep doing my thing, that’s a big fight someday. I just want to fight for the people, I want to make the biggest fights possible, and I’ll give credit to Merab. Merab has improved not just fighting but on social. He’s doing a really good job building himself up, being himself, being a goofy ugly ass, and he’s doing a good job. So that fight’s next.”
If he’s to be asked, O’Malley believes that a fight against the Georgian talent would be easy. Based on his assessment of the fighter’s recent fight and his performance against former champ Alajamain Sterling, he sees an easy win over Dvalishvili.
“I rewatched Henry vs. Aljo after I was there, and I told you I’m knocking Aljo out. All you guys said, ‘No way, you’re not knocking Aljo out; he’s gonna take you down and kill you.’ Here we go again,” O’Malley said.
“When I fight Merab, I’m knocking that dude out. He’s sloppy. I’m accurate. I’m too fast. I’m too sharp. I’m telling you, boys: I put Merab’s lights out worse than Aljo. Aljo was a TKO. Merab, I’m putting him to sleep, turning his nose straight.”
