{"id":128121,"date":"2025-09-08T05:45:11","date_gmt":"2025-09-08T05:45:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/128121\/"},"modified":"2025-09-08T05:45:11","modified_gmt":"2025-09-08T05:45:11","slug":"dwcs-winner-tommy-mcmillen-reveals-ideal-ufc-debut","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/128121\/","title":{"rendered":"DWCS winner Tommy McMillen reveals ideal UFC debut"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Tommy McMillen is officially a UFC fighter, and the next step for his career is now inking date, location and opponent for his octagon debut.<\/p>\n<p>McMillen, a prot\u00e9g\u00e9 of Tim Welch and former UFC bantamweight champion <a href=\"https:\/\/mmajunkie.usatoday.com\/fighters\/sean-omalley\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:Sean O&#039;Malley;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">Sean O&#8217;Malley<\/a>, made a big splash in the MMA world this past Tuesday. Tommy &#8220;Gunz&#8221; walked into the UFC Apex in Las Vegas, looking to earn himself a contract with the UFC at Dana White Contender Series, and that he did. In a wild fight, McMillen (9-0 MMA, 0-0 UFC) rallied back after getting rocked and almost submitted to outslug then undefeated prospect David Mgoyan in a majority decision win.<\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p>Now, with a contract in hand, McMillen hopes to share a card with his friend and teammate, O&#8217;Malley, for his UFC debut.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I really want to open up the next card for my boy O&#8217;Malley,&#8221; McMillen told MMA Junkie. &#8220;We&#8217;ve been training together a lot, two Montana kids. If it was up to me and I had my way, I&#8217;d open up the card for &#8216;Suga,&#8217; 100 percent.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>As of now, there&#8217;s no official return date for O&#8217;Malley, who&#8217;s looking to bounce back from his submission loss to UFC bantamweight champion Merab Dvalishvili in June. Given the nature of his DWCS win, McMillen is hoping to have a speedy recovery and be ready to go for whenever O&#8217;Malley returns to the octagon.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;If it was up to me, I would&#8217;ve gone in there and walked out with no scratches, and I would&#8217;ve tried to get on the mic and get a fight next week,&#8221; McMillen said. &#8220;But obviously, they made me go to the hospital after the fight \u2013 I saw my opponent in there \u2013 and I didn&#8217;t want to go because I wanted to talk to Dana (White) because I knew I was going to get a contract, but I listened to the medical team. They really wanted me to go and get a head scan and make sure my jaw and my eyes were good. The only thing that came back is a broken nose. I have a little bit of a broken nose right now, but that will heal up quicker than an eye socket or a jaw, so we&#8217;re not too bad there.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p>McMillen is proud of what he was able to show at DWCS, and in a way, is happy the fight went the way it did, as opposed to a quick finish. McMillen feels he was able to show the world what he&#8217;s made of.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I saw Dana White out of his seat and he was excited, so I just knew that Dana recognized that thing that people can&#8217;t teach,&#8221; McMillen said. &#8220;A lot of people wouldn&#8217;t have gone out that first round, they wouldn&#8217;t have gone out of that guillotine. So the fact that I got out of that, and I ended the fight the way I did, I think he realized this kid has something you can&#8217;t teach, and I belong in the UFC.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>This article originally appeared on MMA Junkie: <a href=\"https:\/\/mmajunkie.usatoday.com\/story\/sports\/ufc\/2025\/09\/07\/ufc-tommy-mcmillen-wants-debut-same-card-sean-omalley-dwcs-training-partner-teammate\/86027478007\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:DWCS Tommy McMillen wants UFC debut to be on same card as O&#039;Malley;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">DWCS Tommy McMillen wants UFC debut to be on same card as O&#8217;Malley<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tommy McMillen is officially a UFC fighter, and the next step for his career is now inking date,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":128122,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[49,48,10359,641,70305,638,12542,82,70303,640,30004,70304],"class_list":["post-128121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-dana-white","tag-fighting","tag-mcmillen","tag-mma","tag-sean-omalley","tag-sports","tag-tommy-mcmillen","tag-ufc","tag-ufc-apex","tag-ufc-bantamweight-champion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128121","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=128121"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128121\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/128122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=128121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=128121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=128121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}