Las Vegas, NV — After two years out of the cage, ‘Sugar’ Sean O’Malley returns this weekend at UFC 248. Finally.
It has been quite the absence for the bantamweight, one of the sport’s more interesting up-and-comers. O’Malley stormed onto the scene in 2017, winning big on the Contender Series and coming out victorious in his first two UFC fights.
Then, as quickly as he’d arrived, he was gone. But now that is at an end. O’Malley, perhaps in celebration of his return at UFC 248, rocked quite the outfit and hair to the event’s media day. One little secret: he does put product in that hair. “My girl does, she does hair for a living, so she’s got all that stuff in there,” he admitted, speaking to Cageside Press and other media outlets.
O’Malley addressed his return fight against José Alberto Quiñónez this weekend, as well as what he missed in his time away. First off, if you’re looking for a statement, expect it to come in the octagon. “I think my performance will say it all. When I’m in there, doing what I do, that’s why people are attracted to me,” O’Malley said.
O’Malley’s time on the sidelines came about through a doping case under USADA that seemed to drag on endlessly. Despite what USADA deemed was a drug test failure “consistent with exposure to ostarine [a banned substance] as a contaminant,” O’Malley has seen fights moved time and again.
And he’s missed the UFC experience as a result. “The whole fight camp. The whole fight week,” he said, when asked what he missed most. “The weigh-ins are going to be fun. The weight cut sucks, but you almost can find a way to enjoy it. Because you’re never going to do that [weigh-in] unless you do this. So you find little ways to enjoy it — even suffering.”
“If I could never fight again, I’d be like ‘god, I wouldn’t mind cutting weight again,'” he added. “Because that means I have a fight coming up. So just enjoying every little step. I missed it all.”
Watch the full UFC 248 media day press scrum with Sean O’Malley above!
