Newark, NJ — Following Aljamain Sterling’s successful title defense against Henry Cejudo at UFC 288 on Saturday, the man next in line for the UFC bantamweight title, Sean O’Malley, was brought into the cage for a face-off.
That went about as well as you might expect: tempers flared, the face-off devolved into a shouting match, and Merab Dvalishvili, a close friend and teammate of “Aljo,” got into it with O’Malley, at one point donning the “Sugar Show” fighter’s Michael Jackson-esque jacket.
O’Malley was eventually removed from the cage, jacket returned, and brought backstage to address the media, including Cageside Press, at the Prudential Center in Newark.
“Aljo’s beatable, he’s very beatable. I thought he lost tonight,” O’Malley (18-1, 1NC) stated, adding that he hoped their fight would come soon. “The sooner the better. We’ll see. We’ll see what the UFC says. I’m sure they’re getting something figured out very soon.”
When it was mentioned that Sterling has a reputation for making opponents wait, the bantamweight contender told Cageside Press that “I don’t think he’s got a choice. He doesn’t have a choice. He’s going to fight sooner or later.”
Henry Cejudo, O’Malley admitted, would have been a better stylistic match-up, but he also has personal reasons for preferring that fight.
“I thought Henry was a better stylistic match-up, but I also just really want to slap that little dude,” O’Malley exclaimed. “It was win-win for me, but here we are.”
His takeaways after facing off with Sterling, meanwhile, were that “he’s jacked, that dude’s jacked, but he’s not big. He’s not big. He fights with his chin up a little bit— I was just letting him know, he’d better tuck his chin a little bit or I’m going to find it.”
As to how he’ll get the job done against Sterling, where others including Cory Sandhagen, Petr Yan, and now Cejudo have failed, O’Malley said simply “Do what Marlon Moraes did, put his lights out. That’s how you get the job done.”
Watch the full UFC 288 post-fight press conference with Sean O’Malley above.
