People aren’t happy about Sean O’Malley getting a rematch for the UFC Bantamweight title.
Last week, Dana White confirmed the main event for UFC 316 between O’Malley and Merab Dvalishvili. At UFC 306, the 30-year-old lost the belt on his second title defense to Dvalishvili. Since then, Merab has successfully defended his belt against Umar Nurmagomedov.
At the time, the unanimous decision win for Dvalishvili was considered controversial. So when the rematch was announced, there was some ire amongst the MMA fan based. In fact, there was so much backlash that O’Malley responded to it, and the former UFC Bantamweight Champion said on The Ariel Helwani Show, that if fans don’t like the fight then don’t watch it:
“Don’t watch,” O’Malley said. “Saturday night, June 7, f*cking watch your reality TV show. Don’t watch the fight.”
Well, that’s one way to get fans excited for the upcoming pay-per-view.
Nevertheless, O’Malley explained what went wrong in their first match and how he dealt with the second loss of his MMA career.
“There’s two ways you can go from taking a loss,” O’Malley said. “You can either go up or down and I wanted to go up. The camp, the whole fight didn’t go obviously as planned, but I feel like it’s going to make this one that much sweeter. I’m going to be a massive underdog. People aren’t going to expect what I know I’m capable of on June 7, so it’s going to make it that much sweeter.
“I had to wait three-and-a-half years, whatever it was, to prove that the first Chito fight wasn’t the way it was supposed to play out. This one, I didn’t have to wait nearly as long, but I’m excited to go out there and do something similar in the rematch with Merab.”
But even O’Malley admitted later in the interview that the first match isn’t really worth watching. He reinstates that if people don’t want to watch then don’t, but when he wins the belt for the second time, people will rewatch it.
“Again, they’re not interested, don’t watch it. But when I go out there and win, I guarantee people are going to rewatch it or at least rewatch the finish if there’s a finish. Might be a five-round decision, could be a finish, we’ll see. I think at the end of the day, that Saturday rolls around, people are going to be talking about it.”
Are you going to watch UFC 316?