{"id":757269,"date":"2026-06-24T13:39:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-24T13:39:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/757269\/"},"modified":"2026-06-24T13:39:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-24T13:39:09","slug":"omalley-dishes-on-ufc-pay-when-youre-not-a-champion-it-definitely-sucks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/757269\/","title":{"rendered":"O\u2019Malley dishes on UFC pay when you\u2019re not a champion: \u2018It definitely sucks\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">Sean O\u2019Malley is coming off a big knockout win over Aimann Zahabi at the UFC White House, his second victory since losing two title fights to Merab Dvalishvili. And while winning is sweet for \u201cSuga,\u201d the show ain\u2019t worth what it was when he was champion, and that\u2019s clearly a bummer for 31 year old star.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">\u201cI didn\u2019t get the bonus, which considering what happened in the co-main and main, it\u2019s fine,\u201d he said. \u201cBut that big of a moment, knocking out a Canadian in front of Trump, in front of the White House, hitting a salute before he even falls. I\u2019m like, that\u2019s just wild that wasn\u2019t a bonus moment.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">That extra cash would have been nice, especially considering O\u2019Malley is back to making non-champion money. When Steiny said he heard O\u2019Malley was only making around $600,000 for the Zahabi fight, \u201cSuga\u201d said the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mmamania.com\/ufc-news\/417931\/sean-omalley-ready-to-renegotiate-ufc-contract-this-has-been-a-business-since-day-one\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">real number wasn\u2019t far off.<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">\u201cIt\u2019s close-ish,\u201d O\u2019Malley said, before explaining he made a lot more money when fighting for or defending the bantamweight belt. \u201cTitle fights for sure. It definitely sucks. [The Aljamain Sterling] fight, I was the challenger, I wasn\u2019t defending the belt, so it was decent. The Chito [Vera] one was more. Then the Merab one was more, and then the [second] Merab one was less. And then the Song [Yadong] one was, like, way less. And then this one was around the same.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">O\u2019Malley is another one of those fighters that the UFC pulls out whenever they need to make an event pop. He headlined The Sphere. They put him on the debut Paramount+ event. And they had him on the White House card. That\u2019s not random: he moves the needle and brings in an important demographic. To be making less than a million dollars a fight is criminal.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">\u201cI mean, I think he should be,\u201d O\u2019Malley said. \u201cDo I think he made ten million? No shot in hell.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sean O\u2019Malley is coming off a big knockout win over Aimann Zahabi at the UFC White House, his&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":757270,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,785,85,1396],"class_list":["post-757269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-mma","tag-sports","tag-ufc-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/757269","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=757269"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/757269\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/757270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=757269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=757269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=757269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}