O’Malley Won’t Make ‘Notorious’ Mistake Against Yan

Photo by Mike Roach/Zuffa LLC

Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) bantamweight sensation Sean O’Malley has yet to crack the Top 10 of the 135-pound division, but he’s already setting his sights on newly-crowned division kingpin Petr Yan.

It helps that “Sugar” is the talk of the town.

“I’m easily the most talked about guy in the division,” O’Malley told MMA Fighting. “I’m talking a lot of smack about Petr, Cody [Garbrandt], Henry [Cejudo], all these dudes, and they’re all replying. I’m clearly in Petr’s head, or Pete-R, whatever you want to call him. He’s thinking about me. I think he’s dreaming about me, waking up and asking someone to help him tweet something.”

Yan (15-1) captured the vacant 135-pound strap with a technical knockout victory over Jose Aldo at the UFC 251 pay-per-view (PPV) event earlier this month in Abu Dhabi. As for O’Malley, he’s expected to tangle with Marlon Vera at UFC 252 next month in Las Vegas.

“Nothing’s personal,” O’Malley continued. “Short little people like Petr and Cody and Henry have short man syndrome, and they get angry at things and it’s personal. For me, it’s always going to be business. I think Conor [McGregor] was really good at that until the Khabib [Nurmagomedov] fight. I feel like that got too personal, and it played games with him. I definitely learned from that experience with Conor vs. Khabib, I can’t let it get personal.”

McGregor has long been considered a master of pre-fight head games, but perhaps flew too close to the sun during the build-up to his Khabib Nurmagomedov title fight at UFC 229, where “Notorious” was defeated by way of fourth-run submission.

O’Malley remains perfect in 12 trips to the cage.