Maybe that’s just how it works now? Hard to tell.

Top-ranked UFC bantamweight Sean O’Malley has made his reputation, not just as a remarkably talented fighter, but also as a guy with a whole lot to say for himself.

After Cory Sandhagen’s impressive victory this past weekend over Marlon Vera, it seems that O’Malley (16-1) has decided that the win was impressive enough to undo his lone professional loss.

As fans may remember, Vera defeated O’Malley in 2020 at UFC 252. The fight ended in a first round TKO victory that all started with Vera nailing low kicks and pummeling O’Malley with ground strikes as a follow-up.

It was hardly a controversial loss, but O’Malley is sticking to the ancient and time-honored mantra of “hey, that doesn’t count, bruh”.

So once Vera tasted defeat on Saturday night, ‘Sugar’ took to where all the magic happens these days, the splendiferous land of Twitter:

Sweet, simple, to the point.

Okay, perhaps a very dull point.

It may sound like quibbling, but how does Vera losing against someone else undo his win against O’Malley?

Even in some strange world where such a thing might be the case, it seems like it would only apply if O’Malley held his own win over Sandhagen and therefore gets to have his loss overturned due to the transitive property of MMA math. But the man doesn’t even have that going for him. Unless Sandhagen is somehow an ambassador for O’Malley and his record (seems unlikely) that loss still stands. Them’s the breaks.

O’Malley’s imagined victory laps aren’t exactly a new thing. The MMA Lab talent had previously declared himself “mentally undefeated” because he felt his leg was compromised by mere chance, rather than…getting kicked.

Despite the obvious delusion, O’Malley is 4-0 with 1 ‘no-contest’ since losing to Vera. The kind of record any fighter in his right mind would be proud of. The 28-year-old’s latest win over Petr Yan may very well have put him in prime position to challenge for the bantamweight championship sometime in the not too distant future.

It seems inevitable that we’ll all be hearing more about O’Malley’s newly minted unbeaten record in the coming days. In the meantime, he’s sitting pretty near the very top of the division despite his mathematical gymnastics.

Bloody Elbow – All Posts