UFC bantamweight champion Sean O’Malley has given his prediction for a pivotal fight in his weight class between Henry Cejudo and Merab Dvalishvili.
Cejudo and Dvalishvili are set to fight next weekend at UFC 298 in a potential number-one contender fight at bantamweight. The winner could very well be in line to fight the winner of O’Malley vs. Vera 2, which goes down the following month at UFC 299.
Although Sean O’Malley has said he wants to fight for the featherweight belt next, he still will be paying close attention to Henry Cejudo vs. Merab Dvalishvili at UFC 298, but he does favor the Georgian to get the win.
“Henry-Merab is kind of interesting. I think it’s going to be a competitive fight, if I had to guess, I think Merab gets it done. I think he’s in it more, I think Henry is coming back because he’s broke, he doesn’t have any money, he doesn’t know what else to f*****g do. That’s my guess. I think Merab might get that one done,” O’Malley said on Demetrious Johnson’s YouTube channel.
Ahead of the scrap at UFC 298, Merab Dvalishvili is a -198 favorite while Henry Cejudo is a +164 underdog, so the oddsmakers are favoring the Georgian to win. At the -198 odds, the oddsmakers are implying Dvalishvili has a 66.4% chance of winning the fight against the former champ and potentially earning himself a title shot.
However, if Dvalishvili does get the win as Sean O’Malley suspects, ‘Suga’ isn’t too keen on fighting him next. Instead, he has made it clear he wants to face Ilia Topuria next, especially if the Georgian beats Alexander Volkanovski at UFC 298 to become the new featherweight champ.
But, before O’Malley can fight either of them, he will need to beat Vera in his first title defense at UFC 299. It’s a fight that O’Malley enters with a ton of confidence as he has vowed to do something special and KO Vera to defend his bantamweight title for the first time.
Sean O’Malley (17-1 and one No Contest) is coming off a second-round TKO over Aljamain Sterling to become the bantamweight champion back in August. To earn the title shot, ‘Suga’ scored a split decision win over Petr Yan, in what was an upset. In his career, O’Malley holds notable wins over Raulian Paiva, Thomas Almeida, and Eddie Wineland among others.
