Sean O\u2019Malley still has no idea when he\u2019s going to fight next or against who, but he\u2019s hoping the rumors he\u2019s heard floating around are true.<\/p>\n
The UFC seems to like keeping \u201cSuga\u201d in the dark on future fight dates. The former bantamweight champion started training for his 2024 Noche UFC fight<\/a> weeks before the promotion confirmed he\u2019d headline just so he could get a full camp in, and it seems like they\u2019re being just as secretive about his return following a June loss to Merab Dvalishvili.<\/p>\n \u201cEveryone and their grandmother is sending me screenshots of Song Yadong vs. Suga December 6th,\u201d O\u2019Malley said on a recent YouTube video. \u201cPeople are saying \u2018Yo, congrats,\u2019 \u2018Fight camp starts.\u2019 All this and that. And I\u2019m assuming it started because someone sent me, when the fights were in China, Song took a picture with Merab and said he\u2019s fighting me next or whatever.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cTo be honest, I don\u2019t know what the plan is,\u201d he clarified. \u201cThere\u2019s nothing official on my side. I haven\u2019t talked to UFC specifically on who, when, where. Song seems like a great next opponent, though. I mean, it makes sense. I like the matchup. That seems good.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAs far as the date goes, December, January, February, f–kin\u2019 November. I\u2019m good to go. I\u2019m ready to go. Call me for next week \u2026 and I\u2019ll probably say that\u2019s too short notice. But I do like the matchup. Makes sense. I\u2019m healthy, I\u2019m good, training like a motherf–ker. I like that matchup a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cMe vs. Song? If that\u2019s what\u2019s next? Hell yeah.\u201d<\/p>\n O\u2019Malley has good reason to be excited for that matchup. Aside from Marlon Vera, he\u2019s been fighting smothering grapplers for the past two years. A fight with a fellow striker is just what he needs to erase the memory of being bullied around the cage by Merab Dvalishvili in his last two fights.<\/p>\n As for when, we doubt the UFC will call O\u2019Malley for UFC 322<\/a> in November. That card is already stacked with Islam Makhachev fighting Jack Della Maddalena for the welterweight title and Zhang Weili vs. Valentina Shevchenko for the women\u2019s flyweight title. Song vs. O\u2019Malley would be the perfect fight to add for all the Chinese fans tuning in to see Zhang, but we just can\u2019t see the TKO bean counters allowing that much awesome on one card.<\/p>\n UFC 323 on December 6th remains relatively empty at this point and could use a name like O\u2019Malley\u2019s on it \u2026 but TKO business interests may dictate \u201cSuga\u201d return in 2026 as part of the UFC\u2019s new broadcast deal<\/a> with Paramount CBS.<\/p>\n We\u2019ll keep you updated on where the \u201cSuga\u201d Show lands, and against who.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sean O\u2019Malley still has no idea when he\u2019s going to fight next or against who, but he\u2019s hoping…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":147375,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,785,85,1396],"class_list":{"0":"post-147374","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mma","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-fighting","11":"tag-mma","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-ufc-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=147374"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147374\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/147375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=147374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=147374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=147374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}