{"id":405736,"date":"2026-01-13T02:44:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-13T02:44:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/405736\/"},"modified":"2026-01-13T02:44:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-13T02:44:10","slug":"sean-omalley-labels-former-foe-one-of-his-favorite-fighters-to-watch-in-glowing-assessment-of-rival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/405736\/","title":{"rendered":"Sean O&#8217;Malley labels former foe one of his &#8216;favorite fighters to watch&#8217; in glowing assessment of rival"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Former UFC bantamweight champion Sean O\u2019Malley has faced many top names, but one name stands above the rest for the superstar fighter.<\/p>\n<p>Sean O\u2019Malley is days away from his return to the Octagon as he faces surging bantamweight contender Song Yadong at UFC 324 in Las Vegas. O\u2019Malley will look to snap the first losing skid of his career against Yadong in an elite striking matchup.<\/p>\n<p>After Merab Dvalishvili\u2019s loss to Petr Yan at UFC 323, the door is back open for O\u2019Malley and other recent title challengers to make a run at the belt. O\u2019Malley defeated Petr Yan by decision at UFC 280, in what was at the time the biggest win of his career.<\/p>\n<p>While O\u2019Malley\u2019s main focus, as of this writing, is taking down Yadong, a rematch with Yan is a possibility with a victory at UFC 324. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bjpenn.com\/mma-news\/sean-omalley\/sean-omalley-discusses-possible-rematch-against-ufc-champion-petr-yan\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Ahead of a potential rematch<\/a>, don\u2019t expect there to be a lot of animosity from both sides, as O\u2019Malley recently expressed admiration for the current bantamweight champ.<\/p>\n<p>Sean O\u2019Malley: Petr Yan is one of my favorite fighters to watch<\/p>\n<p>In a recent episode of <a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/V2f3W16m-fE?si=uZ13Pdz-0PHZWeHe\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Death Row MMA<\/a>, O\u2019Malley lauded former rival Petr Yan\u2019s skillset, which he\u2019s admired for years.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPetr\u2019s always been one of my favorite fighters to watch. I remember him coming up and I was like, this m\u2014\u2014\u2014- is so skilled, he\u2019s a scary little dude,\u201d O\u2019Malley said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo he\u2019s always been one of my favorites. Mean little f\u2014\u2013. Recently watched his last fight with Merab, a couple days ago, and it was such a beautiful performance. Him elbowing the forearm and Merab after the first round holding it, it was just such a beautiful performance and one of the sickest performances I\u2019ve ever seen.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Yan has earned recent wins over the likes of Marcus McGhee, Yadong, and Dvalishvili. As Yan begins his second lineal bantamweight title reign, O\u2019Malley and others are waiting in the wings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former UFC bantamweight champion Sean O\u2019Malley has faced many top names, but one name stands above the rest&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":405737,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[49,48,641,638,18235,12542,141661,82,640,153471],"class_list":["post-405736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-fighting","tag-mma","tag-petr-yan","tag-sean-omalley","tag-song-yadong","tag-sports","tag-ufc","tag-ufc-324"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405736","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=405736"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405736\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/405737"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=405736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=405736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=405736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}