Sean O’Malley has doubled down on his plans to have a rematch with Marlon Vera serve as his first UFC title defense.
O’Malley (17-1 MMA) captured the promotion’s highly coveted bantamweight world title in stunning fashion earlier this month at UFC 292, stopping Aljamain Sterling with a second-round TKO victory (see that here).
Prior to his highlight reel victory over ‘Funkmaster’, ‘Suga’ had stated his intentions of having his first title defense come against his former adversary Marlon Vera.
“I used to call ‘Chito’ a journeyman, but that was before he beat all those good guys. I didn’t think ‘Chito’ was going to get as good as he did, but he’s gotten good. He’s gotten really good, and nothing but respect for him. The biggest fight in the division is me vs. anybody, but me vs. ‘Chito,’ the people have been waiting for it, and it’s getting closer.”
(via Zuffa LLC)
Now, after capturing the undisputed bantamweight championship, Sean O’Malley is adamant that wants to have his first title defense come at December’s UFC 296 event against the one man to ever hand him a defeat, Marlon Vera.
“The ‘Chito’ rematch is a very interesting fight,” O’Malley said on his YouTube channel (h/t MMAJunkie). “It’s interesting to me, interesting for the fans – it’s the next biggest fight. He needs to chill out and quit acting. He needs to chill out.”
O’Malley continued by expressing his belief that a rematch with Vera is the biggest fight to make in terms of pay-per-view success:
“The ‘Chito’ rematch gets me excited too because I think it’s a fan favorite fight right there. I think it’s a big fight. I think it does big pay-per-views, and now that I get pay-per-view points, I really feel like now it’s game time.”
Sean O’Malley and Marlon Vera originally collided at UFC 252 in August of 2020, with ‘Chito’ emerging victorious by way of first-round TKO. ‘Suga’ blamed that loss on “drop foot”, which was the injury he suffered as a result of a nasty low kick from Ecuadorian.
Do you think ‘O’Malley vs. Vera 2’ is the fight to make next?
