Sean O’Malley doesn’t like Conor McGregor all that much these days, but he completely understands that the former two-division UFC champ is the biggest star in the history of the sport.
O’Malley addressed McGregor as he continues getting ready to defend his bantamweight title in the main event of UFC 306 on Sept. 14 at Sphere in Las Vegas against No. 1 contender Merab Dvalishvili.
In an interview with ESPN, O’Malley, who knocked out Dvalishvili’s teammate Aljamain Sterling at UFC 292 in August 2023 to win the title, was asked how close he is to becoming the face of the UFC. The flamboyant bantamweight says it’s hard to gauge with a pay-per-view model littered with illegal streaming, but for him, he sees a path to getting there if the roadmap he’s drawn out in his head actually happens.
“Right now it’s Conor McGregor, 100 percent,” O’Malley said. “He’s a dork, but it’s the truth. For me to get to that, I need to go out there and knock out Merab, I go up to [145 pounds], I beat Ilia [Topuria], I beat Max [Holloway], I beat Umar [Nurmagomedov], I’m three fights away from being one of the greatest of all-time, one of the most exciting of all-time. There’s [a] difference.
“No one thinks Conor’s the greatest fighter of all-time. He was lacking skills, lacked title defenses, but entertainment wise, he’s the best in the world. Entertainment wise, he was the best.”
O’Malley successfully defended his title with a stellar performance in a lopsided decision win against longtime rival Marlon Vera to get revenge on the only man to defeat him in an MMA fight. That 25-minute outing opened a lot of eyes to the, perhaps, underrated ceiling the MMA community placed on him throughout his build to the title.
While being the UFC’s biggest star is an accomplishment — albeit a lucrative one — O’Malley says he’s striving for more: The combination of superstardom, and historical greatness.
“Greatest fighter of all-time, Jon Jones, Khabib [Nurmagomedov], Islam [Makhachev], [all] up there,” O’Malley explained. “I want to be both. I want to be one of the greatest of all-times, and one of the most entertaining of all-times. That’s my goal.”
