UFC 299: A Sean O'Malley Deep-Dive

The main event of Saturday night’s UFC 299 card will be a bantamweight title bout between current champion, “Suga” Sean O’Malley, and challenger Marlon “Chito” Vera. This fight is a rematch from 2020 that saw Vera win by first round TKO, and remains the only blemish on O’Malley’s professional record. That first fight also came a mere 13 months following Sean’s second consecutive six-month suspension resulting from him failing a drug test for ostarine.

The suspensions and the loss were barely obstacles in the path of the meteoric rise of O’Malley. Following the defeat, Sean has won five fights in a row, with those opponents having gone a combined 0-3 since losing to him. While Sean has finished all but one of those five wins, he also sports a “69” tattoo in honor of, and applied by, noted pedophile, Takashi69.

Even in his early days, Sean proved to be an undeniable talent, benefiting greatly from advantageous card placement and baby soft matchmaking. Prior to his last fight where he challenged Aljamain Sterling for the 135 lb title, Sean had amassed 10 bouts in the UFC, with nine of those on pay per view. The sole outlier was his first official UFC bout, where he was the co-main event of The Ultimate Fighter season 26 finale. Of those nine PPV cards O’Malley was on, eight were on the main card, with that exception being the featured prelim spot.

He was strongly in the spotlight even before he signed with the UFC. During Sean’s knockout victory on Dana White’s Contender Series, a highly intoxicated Snoop Dogg providing alternate commentary shouted O’Malley’s praises in a moment of forced virality. There’s no denying the marketing benefit of having someone infinitely more famous than you broadcast your greatness.

Despite purposefully cultivating an aesthetic that can best be described as “eighth grade stoner’s self-insert South Park character”, O’Malley has stated the only worth he sees in the UFC’s women’s roster is how attractive and sexually desirable he finds them. On Saturday night, he will make the brash decision to fight in pink shorts!

While O’Malley has proven himself in his last two fights with Petr Yan and Aljamain Sterling, his strength of schedule leading up to that point was less than impressive. Of his other seven UFC victories, those fighters have a combined 21-34 UFC record. Once Yan and Sterling’s marks are factored in, his victories have come against opponents with a combined 44-42 UFC record.