Sean O’Malley continues to troll Merab Dvalishvili.
At UFC 306, Dvalishvili earned a unanimous decision win over O’Malley, claiming the bantamweight title. In the immediate aftermath, O’Malley said he had “no excuses” however, “Suga” quickly changed his tune, later arguing that he should have won three rounds of the fight and arguing he was still the bantamweight champion. In response, Dvalishvili fired back at O’Malley with a video mocking the former champion as his “son.”
And now O’Malley has responded.
On Monday, O’Malley dropped another video on his social media, mocking Dvalishvili and their fight, saying he was working on things he learned in his last fight, before holding a heavy bag and lightly kneeing it, then feigning getting hurt to the body and head afterward.
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A post shared by Suga Sean O’Malley (@sugasean)
“What’s up guys. I’ve got surgery on Oct. 3, [but that] doesn’t mean I’m not going to continue to improve and take away things I learned from my last fight and start implementing now.”
O’Malley is scheduled for surgery to repair a torn labrum in his hip on Oct. 3, suffered before UFC 306, and hopes to return to action next summer. Meanwhile, Dvalishvili is likely to face Umar Nurmagomedov in the first defense of his bantamweight title.
Conor McGregor is anything but an owner in name only when it comes to his investment in BKFC.
The former two-division UFC champion—who became a part owner in BKFC back in April—is so serious about his passion for bare-knuckle fighting that he’s promising to eventually take the gloves off and set foot in the ring for a fight himself. With only two fights remaining on his current UFC contract and the chance to act as his own promoter, BKFC president and founder David Feldman is taking McGregor’s declaration seriously.
“Unless he’s the best salesman in the world, the talks that we’ve had it’s like ‘I’m fighting here,’” Feldman told MMA Fighting. “I’m like yeah, OK. He [said] ‘I’m fighting here.’
“I go, ‘Why wouldn’t you fight here?’ Because you have equity in the company and if you fight here, you’ll probably make more money than anywhere else in the world because of what it’s going to do for the company. So I truly believe what you said — I think 100 percent he fights here.”
The UFC recently announced that Michael Chandler would fight Charles Oliveira in November after he spent nearly two years waiting for a matchup against McGregor, which prompted the Irish superstar to suggest a co-promotion with BKFC so he could get back in action sooner rather than later.
While there’s no doubting McGregor’s immense drawing power and the influence he holds with UFC, Feldman knows there’s no chance UFC would ever co-promote with him but it’s not because there isn’t mutual respect between the promotions.
“The UFC doesn’t need us,” Feldman said. “They don’t need us. We need to [co-promote] with them, they don’t need to [co-promote] with us, which would be phenomenal — they’re not going to do it. If they do Conor McGregor with anything, he don’t need to [co-promote] with us.”
That means McGregor would need to leave UFC to fight for BKFC, but Feldman has stopped doubting his new business partner after seeing his commitment over these past few months.
McGregor could have easily injected some cash into BKFC, called himself a co-owner and then faded into the background after grabbing a few headlines. Feldman says that interpretations of McGregor’s involvement couldn’t be further from the truth.
“He’s been unbelievable,” Feldman said about McGregor. “He’s really been a partner so far. Blew away my expectations. Doing the interviews, he did the post-fight press conference, he’s meeting the guys. He’s going over and hugging the fighters and telling them, ‘Come on let’s do this!’ He’s sitting there ringside cheering for them. He’s posting all the time about it. He’s all in.
“We had a great talk this weekend, it was just me and him talking and I said to him ‘I don’t know if you really believe me, but this is going to be the biggest thing in the world in a few years, there’s nothing that’s going to be bigger than this, trust me.’ He goes, ‘It’s going to be two years.’”
Considering that just about everything McGregor touches turns to gold, it’s tough to imagine he won’t find a way to build BKFC into a powerhouse that will go toe-to-toe with just about any other combat sports organization out there.
Feldman is realistic when it comes to size and scale because he knows the UFC is a promotional juggernaut that won’t be toppled. Still, he admits that the exponential growth of BKFC over these past few years has blown away even his biggest expectations and he expects McGregor to help them grow even bigger in the future.
“[Conor] sees the vision,” Feldman said. “Are we ever going to be the biggest combat sport in the world? Probably not honestly but we’re definitely going to be one of the biggest. Absolutely. The numbers just keep going up.”
Sean Strickland and Alex Pereira | Photo by Jeff Bottari/Zuffa LLC
Alex Pereira will have ex-opponent Sean Strickland in his camp for his UFC 307 title defense versus Khalil Rountree, he revealed Sunday on his YouTube channel.
“Poatan,” who knocked out Strickland back in 2022 to earn a shot at the middleweight belt before later becoming friends with the Las Vegas-based fighter, moved his camp to the altitude of Salt Lake City to prepare for UFC 307, which takes place in the capital of Utah on Oct. 5.
“The thing about the altitude is that it’s hard [to train],” Pereira said. “We did this once when I fought [Jan] Blachowicz. We did it for two weeks then, and three weeks now. I think it’s going to be much better.”
Pereira defeated Blachowicz via decision in his first light heavyweight bout inside the octagon, also at SLC’s Vivint Arena, and now returns as 205-pound champion to face Rountree. The challenger earned a shot at gold following five straight wins, including four knockouts.
“We have a great team here,” said Pereira, who usually trains at Glover Teixeira’s team in Danbury, Conn. “We have Glover, Plinio [Cruz], Yousri [Belgaroui], ‘Cesinha’ [Cesar Almeida]. Sean Strickland is also coming next week to train with us here. I’m very happy with this preparation.”
Pereira vs. Rountree serves as the main event for UFC 307, with bantamweight champion Raquel Pennington defending her throne versus Julianna Peña in the co-main event slot.
Meanwhile, Strickland is campaigning for a rematch with UFC middleweight champion Dricus du Plessis next, but the company has yet to make an announcement on who will get the shot at 185 pounds.
Reigning UFC light heavyweight champion, Alex Pereira, will defend his 205-pound title against No. 8-ranked division bruiser, Khalil Rountree Jr., atop the upcoming UFC 307 pay-per-view (PPV) event on Sat., Oct. 5, 2024 at Delta Center in Salt Lake City, Utah.
And he’ll get some help from a former opponent (and ex-middleweight champion).
“We have a good team,” Pereira said on YouTube. “Glover [Teixeira], Plinio [Cruz], Yousri [Belgaroui], Cesinha [Cesar Almeida], and Sean Strickland will be here with us next week. The whole crew is here, [I am] very happy, excited. With all this preparation, for me it’s been very good to do this, come three weeks earlier.”
Salt Lake City is known for its punishing altitude, nearly 4,300 feet above sea level.
Pereira (11-2) has been nothing short of unstoppable since migrating to the 205-pound weight class back in early 2023. “Poatan” is coming off three straight knockout victories over Jiri Prochazka (twice) and Jamahal Hill.
The Brazilian stopped Strickland by way of knockout at UFC 276 in summer 2022.
Rountree (13-5, 1 NC) is the winner of five straight, with four of those contests ending by way of knockout. That includes his UFC Vegas 83 destruction of one-time title challenger Anthony Smith back in late 2023.
For the current UFC 307 fight card and PPV lineup click here.
Valentina Shevchenko didn’t keep receipts, but she was definitely shocked to see how many professional fighters picked against her in the trilogy with Alexa Grasso at UFC 306.
While she was winning the majority of their first fight until getting caught with a submission late in the fourth round and then by all accounts deserving of a win in the rematch if not for some controversial scoring from the judges, Shevchenko somehow felt like she was being underrated ahead of the third fight.
That’s why she felt the need to put the nail in the coffin when it came to her rivalry with Grasso and what resulted was a one-sided fight from start to finish.
“Surprisingly for me, many UFC fighters, many pro fighters when they had their picks before our third fight they said ‘Grasso … oh Grasso.’ It was kind of one-sided,” Shevchenko told MMA Fighting.
“It was a little bit surprising for me that I would take it from people who don’t know much about martial arts, and they just want to see stupid in the striking, like [finding out] who has a stronger chin, a stronger head and it doesn’t involve too much technique, too much fighter IQ, too much of the character of the fighter. I would take it from those people but when pro fighters say that, it was like, oh my God. There’s something wrong with this world. That’s another reason I had to show domination. I had to show I’m superior in every field.”
A big part of the problem that Shevchenko identified was the way her trilogy with Grasso was promoted with the majority of the attention being paid to her opponent.
Shevchenko understood that UFC 306 was billed as a “love letter to Mexico” with the card built around celebrating Mexican Independence Day. Grasso was also the only Mexican champion competing at the event, so shining a brighter spotlight on her made sense.
That said, Shevchenko didn’t appreciate she was somehow forgotten when it came to the highlights from their previous two fights.
“When constantly, over the year, they’re showing the best moments of one fighter and it doesn’t show anything from the other fighter, but the people they don’t watch the full fight,” Shevchenko lamented. “They just see these small clips and they just hear it repeated and repeated. It’s kind of like this is how propaganda works. It’s kind of like [hard] to deal with.
“I knew, for example what had happened in the second fight, for example there is a combination, 10 successful hits from my side and one hit from her side. The media to promote the new champion, to celebrate everything, they get rid of all of my successful combinations and just focus on this one good combination from her. They repeat this over and over. People who didn’t watch the fight, and it’s sad, they don’t watch the fight — they just listen and see all these replays and they start to believe that it’s true.”
To counter that promotional push for Grasso leading into UFC 306, Shevchenko took it upon herself to leave no doubts this time around.
She out-struck Grasso on the feet, took her down eight times and racked up over 16 minutes of control time on the canvas. It was a clean sweep with unanimous 50-45 scorecards across the board as Shevchenko defeated Grasso and reclaimed her UFC flyweight title.
“I knew going into this fight, I cannot let this happen again,” Shevchenko said. “I didn’t have another choice. Don’t let her have these successful combinations, not even one. That’s why I was faster in the striking, she could not respond to my striking and I want to show my skills on the ground game because hearing all people say ‘Valentina, you’re a striker, you’re going to be all striking, you don’t have wrestling.’ I don’t know why but they thought she could out-wrestle me. Yeah definitely it’s because of a lucky submission in the first fight when I lost my belt and everyone thought, ‘You are just a striker you don’t have a ground game.’ But I am a martial artist. I am an MMA fighter. I’m a complete fighter. I have to show that you forget, this is my ground game.
“It was no choice for me. They didn’t leave me another one. Just to completely destroy the game plan of Alexa and show that she cannot do anything, not in the striking, not in the wrestling, not in the grappling.”
With Grasso beaten and the UFC title back around her waist, Shevchenko is happy to put the past behind her, which is why she’s not calling out anybody by name when it came to the fighters who picked against her.
She’s happy to let bygones be bygones, although just know, Shevchenko is always watching.
“When you win the fight, you’re already passed it. You never look back,” Shevchenko said. “Every time I try to see the best in people, the good in people because I think this is important.
“Everyone can make errors. If you don’t have a chance to correct these errors for the people, how will it work? It never will work. That’s why there’s no trust for each other. I give people a second chance.”
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