Sean O\u2019Malley is happy to wait on Petr Yan.<\/p>\n
At UFC White House, O\u2019Malley picked up his second win in a row, stopping Aiemann Zahabi in the second round. The victory put O\u2019Malley firmly in the title mix at 135 pounds, especially given that he already has a win over current champion Petr Yan. The problem for O\u2019Malley is that Yan has unfinished business with Merab Dvalishvili, and the two seem destined for a trilogy fight to settle their rivalry. And if that\u2019s the case, O\u2019Malley says he\u2019s fine waiting.<\/p>\n
\u201cPetr\u2019s the champ,\u201c O\u2019Malley told MMA Fighting. \u201cIf I don\u2019t get that next, I wait. If Petr beats Merab, me vs. Petr. How do you not make that fight?\u201d<\/p>\n
O\u2019Malley beat Yan when the two fought back at UFC 280 in 2022, taking a controversial split decision. That win propelled \u201cSuga\u201d to a title fight with Aljamain Sterling, which he won, cementing himself as one of the top stars in MMA.<\/p>\n
In his first title defense, O\u2019Malley got his revenge on Marlon \u201cChito\u201d Vera, which O\u2019Malley says is currently the biggest fight in divisional history, but should Yan beat Dvalishvili and set up their rematch, the former bantamweight champion believes that fight would overtake it.<\/p>\n
\u201cAbsolutely [it\u2019s the biggest fight in bantamweight history],\u201d O\u2019Malley said. \u201cI would love to hear someone\u2019s argument. I think me vs. Chito is the biggest fight as of now. As far as numbers, gate, that was the biggest bantamweight fight in history. I think me vs. Petr would beat that.\u201d<\/p>\n
First things first, though, Yan and Dvalishvili need to settle up. The bantamweight champion has been out of action since December after undergoing back surgery following his title-winning performance, though the trilogy bout is expected to take place before the end of the year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sean O\u2019Malley is happy to wait on Petr Yan. At UFC White House, O\u2019Malley picked up his second…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":812633,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,1347,785,85,787,1396,14855],"class_list":["post-812632","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-latest-news","tag-mma","tag-sports","tag-ufc","tag-ufc-news","tag-videos"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/812632","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=812632"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/812632\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/812633"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=812632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=812632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=812632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}