Henry Cejudo is throwing plenty of shade toward Sean O'Malley after UFC 306.
O’Malley (18-2 MMA, 10-2 UFC) lost his bantamweight title to Merab Dvalishvili (18-4 MMA, 11-2 UFC) by unanimous decision in Saturday’s Noche UFC headliner at Sphere in Las Vegas. Cejudo picked Dvalishvili to win and gloated about his accurate prediction. He also thinks O’Malley got lucky in his title-winning knockout of Aljamain Sterling at UFC 292.
“What can I say? I predicted these things,” Cejudo said on his “Pound 4 Pound” podcast with Kamaru Usman. “Sean is not accustomed to going five rounds, and he is not accustomed to people on his legs, and I just felt like – I still go back and say, ‘Hey, that fight with Aljamain Sterling, that was a fluke too.’
“Aljamain was still in that fight, and people thought I was just hating. No, I’ve been in there with Merab. I did a whole lot better than Sean did when I fought Merab. I mean, I took down Merab. Like, Merab is lucky that I had that groin injury.”
Cejudo was flabbergasted by two judges scoring the fight 48-47 in favor of Dvalishvili. He doesn’t think O’Malley won a single round.
“You have to be careful, man. These judges need to pay for what they do,” Cejudo said. “Where is the accountability on some of these guys? Some of these guys have been boxing judges for years. Sometimes I wonder what the hell they’re looking at, but at the same thing Dana says ‘don’t leave it in the hands of the judges.’
“That scorecard is absolutely ridiculous, I don’t know what round Sean even won. Maybe the fifth? Because he hit him to the body, but he did get taken down at the end, and he did get beat up on bottom. Maybe give him that one, but other than that, that was a 50-45 slaughtering. Talk about being controlled.”
Cejudo plans to drop back down to flyweight but reiterated that he’d stick around at bantamweight if O’Malley is willing to fight him.
“I personally would love to fight him,” Cejudo said. “I think with all the trolling that we have done to each other, we both live in the same city, but I just don’t think that he’s going to want to fight me particularly right after this performance that Merab did to him.
“Merab was lucky that I was hurt in that fight. … Moving forward, if Sean O’Malley is willing and wants to fight this troll who’s the true king of Arizona, well then here I am. But if not, I’m making my way back down to 125 pounds because I’m not going to waste my time.”
For more on the card, visit MMA Junkie’s event hub for UFC 306.
