{"id":870726,"date":"2026-08-27T22:14:10","date_gmt":"2026-08-27T22:14:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/870726\/"},"modified":"2026-08-27T22:14:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-27T22:14:10","slug":"sean-omalley-believes-hell-be-the-bantamweight-goat-by-the-time-his-career-is-over-motivation-for-greatness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/870726\/","title":{"rendered":"Sean O’Malley believes he’ll be the bantamweight GOAT by the time his career is over: ‘Motivation for greatness’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Trending:Robert Whittaker called out by former UFC champ for light heavyweight return<\/a>\"Sean<\/p>\n

Sean O\u2019Malley wants to be considered the bantamweight GOAT by the time his career is over.<\/p>\n

O\u2019Malley is a former UFC champion who defended his belt just once, but he is just 31-years-old, so he still has several years left. With that, he said his motivation right now is to reclaim his belt and cement himself as an all-time great.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s always hard to say who\u2019s the GOAT, who\u2019s this, who\u2019s that?\u201d O\u2019Malley said to UFC on Paramount+.<\/a>\u00a0\u201cLooking back on my career, it\u2019s like Aljamain Sterling was the GOAT until I knocked him out. And now Petr Yan can be considered the GOAT, I beat him. So it\u2019s hard to say. Merab\u2019s up there. Defended the belt three times. It\u2019s hard to say who\u2019s the GOAT.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter it\u2019s all said and done I\u2019d like to consider myself the GOAT. I think Petr goes out there and beats Merab, I go out there and get a clear, decisive victory over Petr Yan, that\u2019s two huge wins over two of the best, two out of the three. If Petr, Aljo, and Merab are the three GOATS in conversation, and I\u2019ve beat two of them. I do want to get that Merab fight back someday, but it has to make sense timing-wise. It\u2019s hard to say. It\u2019s up for opinion. In my opinion, who\u2019s the bantamweight GOAT? I guess we\u2019ll get to find out Oct. 24 and go from there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sean O\u2019Malley using GOAT status as motivation<\/p>\n

With O\u2019Malley wanting to be considered the bantamweight GOAT, he knows he has to reclaim the belt and keep defending it.<\/p>\n

So, as Sean O\u2019Malley is closing in on a title shot, \u2018Suga\u2019 said he has a second wind of motivation now in his career, and that\u2019s to be an all-time great.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s interesting, the come-up, you\u2019re motivated and then you get to a certain spot and then you realize you can really achieve greatness, so I feel like I have a second motivation now is to achieve real greatness and I have such opportunities\u2014If I can get a win over Merab, if I can another win over Petr, if I can get a win over Umar [Nurmagomedov], if I can get a win over Cory [Sandhagen]. There\u2019s so much greatness yet to be achieve that I feel like I still can accomplish, so there\u2019s the motivation for greatness,\u201d O\u2019Malley is.<\/p>\n

Sean O\u2019Malley is 20-3 with one NC and is coming off a knockout win<\/a> over Aiemann Zahabi.<\/p>\n

Do you think Sean O\u2019Malley is in the GOAT conversation at bantamweight?<\/p>\n

This article appeared first on BJPENN.COM<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Trending:Robert Whittaker called out by former UFC champ for light heavyweight return Sean O\u2019Malley wants to be considered…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":870727,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,785,85],"class_list":["post-870726","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-mma","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/870726","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=870726"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/870726\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/870727"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=870726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=870726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=870726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}