Sean O’Malley hasn’t forgotten his beef with Henry Cejudo.
The reigning bantamweight champion defends his title against Merab Dvalishvili this Saturday at UFC 306 in Las Vegas, but he took time out of his fight week to make an appearance on Cejudo and Kamaru Usman’s Pound 4 Pound podcast. “Appearance” being used in the strictest sense here, because O’Malley used his brief time to praise Usman and troll Cejudo before unceremoniously exiting the program.
Watch O’Malley pop in to the show below.
“Boys, you guys know I’m a very, very busy man,” O’Malley said. “I’ll keep this short. I came here for two reasons: 1) praise to Kamaru, you’re an absolute legend and 2) Henry, how’d you let Aljo take you down so easy. (laughs) You’re welcome!”
O’Malley’s dig at Cejudo referenced the former two-division champion’s 2023 comeback fight at UFC 288 against then-bantamweight titleholder Aljamain Sterling, which Cejudo lost by a narrow split decision. Sterling dropped the belt to O’Malley in his next defense at UFC 292.
While Usman took the prank in stride, Cejudo was more annoyed.
“He’s trolling us,” Cejudo said. “He came on here just to do that and he’s out (laughs). Don’t f*cking praise him after all that.”
The O’Malley-Cejudo rivalry dates back to July 2022, when the fighters had a backstage interaction at UFC 276. Cejudo took it upon himself to interrupt an O’Malley post-fight interview, and O’Malley later called Cejudo a “fat-ass.”
There’s never really been a reconciliation, but Cejudo expects to settle the beef in the cage under the assumption that O’Malley loses this weekend.
“I thought about this, too,” Cejudo said. “Once he loses to Merab—because I do believe he’s going to lose to Merab—f*ck it, the next fight that’s up is me and him. Deiveson [Figueiredo’s] going to fight Petr Yan, Umar [Nurmagomedov’s] already fighting for the belt, the only dude that’s really left in that whole division is myself. The next best thing is going to be me.
“Granted, I’ve lost two. I lost to the former champion, I lose to the soon-to-be-pending world champion, but what can we say, I think after this fight I know that Merab is going to get this win.”
As Cejudo noted, he is 0-2 since returning from a three-year break from MMA competition. He previously held titles at 125 and 135 pounds in addition to owning a gold medal in freestyle wrestling from the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
Cejudo revealed he is working on a return to the flyweight division, but he’ll put that move on hold if the O’Malley fight is on the table.
“If he loses this fight with Merab Dvalishvili, I do believe—and I am planning on going to flyweight… I’m going to make it public here, too, I am planning on going to flyweight,” Cejudo said. “I started my diet, I’m going to do everything right, and the only reason why I even want to do that because the more disciplined that I have to become, the more I have to pretty much reach that new height of discipline.
“But there’s one fight, the fight between me and ‘Sean O’Smelly,’ ‘Ronald McDonald’ makes a lot of sense and I think we can do it here in Phoenix. That’s the only fight at 135 pounds and that would get me quicker to the title shot at 135 pounds, so I would still love that.”
A matchup between Cejudo and O’Malley would pit two Arizona-based fighters against one another and Cejudo says that the close proximity has only increased their animosity and their familiarity.
“But that being said, he doesn’t know how to get off of bottom,” Cejudo said. “He’s having trouble. I have three training partners that have gone out there that’s all told me the same shit. Just like when I’m injured, he always knows, he’s tweeted out when I lost to Merab Dvalishvili, he knew that I was injured. That’s what happens when you live in the same city, people know other people that will say shit.”
