Fresh off his his first title defense, bantamweight champion Sean O’Malley wants to headline the UFC 306 fight card at the Sphere on Mexican Independence Day.
“Headlining the Sphere in Vegas. Let’s do it,” O’Malley told The MMA Hour when asked about his next fight. “I think that makes sense. I don’t think anybody would agree against that. I think that would be legendary.”
O’Malley successfully defended the 135-pound title in the UFC 299 main event last Saturday winning a one-sided decision over Marlon “Chito” Vera. After the fight, he called out featherweight titleholder Ilia Topuria, but top contender Merab Dvalishvili has been assured that he’s next in line.
“I go back and forth with Ilia and Marab,” O’Malley said about his next opponent. “Ilia, this guy’s acting like he’s running the show. Like, ‘no, you wait. You sit out and wait.’ UFC is going to decide buddy. This guy’s acting like he gets to call. He wants me to fight Merab next. I have more title defenses, so he’s talking about of his mouth a little bit too much. At the end of the day it’s going to be what Uncle Dana [White], Uncle Hunter [Campbell], it’s going to be what they want. I’m open for whatever.”
Topuria captured the featherweight championship by knocking out longtime titleholder Alexander Volkanovski at UFC 298 on Feb. 17. He’ll likely have to defend the belt at least once before taking challenged outside the weight class. Dvalishvili seems like O’Malley’s next adversary.
“I definitely think a Merab fight would be pretty big,” O’Malley said. “He’s on a 10-fight win streak. He’s was kind of known for being boring, boring, boring. Now he’s popular from being boring. It’s kind of a weird way to get popular, but he did it which is impressive.”
“I think that fight could be marketed well,” O’Malley continued. “10-fight win streak. I knocked out his cousin.”
https://www.mmaweekly.com/news/sean-omalley-eyeing-the-sphere-for-next-fight
