Tim Welch, Sean O’Malley’s head coach, is supporting his fighter’s dreams of holding two golds in the future.
O’Malley still has to defend his bantamweight belt against Marlon Vera in a rematch, but the champ already has plans for the future. That includes challenging Ilia Topuria in case the young fighter manages to steal the belt from Alexander Volkanovski at UFC 298. The featherweight title challenger already turned down the proposal from “Sugar,” but the champ continues to push it. Other fighters also joined the talk, lambasting the plan and noting that O’Malley still has a lot of fighters to handle in his own division, including Merab Dvalishvili and Cory Sandhagen. Welch does not disagree with that but expressed trust in O’Malley, whom he believes can manage the two divisions.
“For sure, it’s bound to happen — the Cory Sandhagen fight is bound to happen, 100 percent. Merab, it’s bound to happen,” Welch said on a recent episode of The MMA Hour. “If Merab whoops Henry’s ass, then that fight’s bound to happen. If Henry whoops Merab’s ass, that’s bound to happen too. I don’t really deal with that too much, but I know Sean wants the biggest fights, which, you can’t blame him. And whatever is going to be the biggest fight is what he’s going to want to do.”
Of course, the plan would only be pushed if Topuria indeed gets the belt. Welch is partially doubtful about the capability of “El Matador” to defeat “The Great,” but in case the former succeeds, he believes the O’Malley vs. Topuria fight is something the MMA world would want to see.
“Who wouldn’t want to see that fight?” Welch said. “That would be a sweet fight. Ilia’s one of our favorite fighters to watch. He’s one of the most technical, sound guys out there, just watching his boxing. But I have seen them in the same room, I’ve seen them — Ilia’s not way bigger [than O’Malley]. And Ilia’s an orthodox guy, he’s got a really wide stance, he’s got a super linear stance — and we’ve been fighting orthodox boxers [O’Malley’s] whole career. Orthodox boxers like that who are good, they really want to get their jab started. It’s just a good fight for Sean. He’s good at knocking them out.”
