Skip to main content

Aljamain Sterling dubs Sean O'Malley as 'wannabe knock-off' Conor McGregor

Aljamain Sterling thinks Sean O'Malley is being promoted as a big star, but says he’s no Conor McGregor.

Bantamweight champion Sterling (23-3 MMA, 15-3 UFC) will defend his title against O’Malley (16-1 MMA, 8-1 UFC) in the UFC 292 headliner Aug. 19 at TD Garden in Boston.

Sterling, who’s fresh off a title defense against Henry Cejudo at UFC 288, wanted some time to see how his body feels before committing to his next fight. That prompted Dana White to criticize Sterling for accepting the fight, and led O’Malley’s head coach, Tim Welch, to think the promotion would rather have O’Malley as champ.

But Sterling thinks O’Malley has yet to back up his performances like McGregor did when he was on the rise.

“I do think that the UFC does want (O’Malley as the champion),” Sterling said on his YouTube channel. “But then (Welch) started going into his reasonings of why and started calling (O’Malley) like this knockout artist – and not saying he never knocked anybody out, but it’s just very different now that he’s swimming with the big boys in the deep end.

“We just haven’t quite seen this magic knockout wannabe knock-off McGregor – that was like the trajectory that he was on. But for some reason, it’s just like people just don’t got the formula or the juice to be Conor.”

O’Malley’s most recent appearance was a controversial split decision win over Petr Yan at UFC 280 this past October. Sterling rates O’Malley’s skills highly, but isn’t sold on some of his performances.

“Anytime this man has stepped in there with a shark in the deep end, he’s been chewed up, for the most part, every single time,” Sterling said. “Maybe not say chewed up – (against Marlon) ‘Chito’ (Vera), he got flatlined. You ever see a domino, how you just topple it over and just falls? That was him.”

For more on the card, visit MMA Junkie’s event hub for UFC 292.



from MMA Junkie https://ift.tt/WfjGlOe
via IFTTT
Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

Burmese fighter: Joshua Van details pioneering journey to plant Myanmar's flag on UFC turf

Joshua Van remembers asking his mother why they had to live in Houston. Why couldn’t they just go back home where things were familiar? He was 12 years old at the time, and Van wanted to go back to where he lived the first decade of his life, in Myanmar. Life wasn’t easy for an undersized pre-teen who spoke little English and was picked on during school for both of those attributes. Looking back, the math adds up that he’d become the first Burmese fighter to compete in the UFC. “I was a small kid,” Van recently told MMA Junkie. “From where I come from, you get picked on. It’s kind of like I fight everyday, and I got to the point where I enjoyed fighting. I watched clips on street fights and how to win street fights. I tried it in my next fight and things like that. That’s what got me into my career.” Van grew up one of five siblings in Myanmar, a country ridden with military and political conflict . When things increasingly worsened, Van’s parents decided to move to Malaysia. Van...
Read more

Video: Oli Thompson lands devastating first-round knockout punch on Aleksei Oleinik in Russia

Aleksei Oleinik returned to action for the first time since his UFC exit, but things did not go in his favor. In the main event of REN TV Fight Club at Dynamo Volleyball Arena in Moscow, Russia, Oleinik (60-17-1 MMA) faced fellow UFC veteran Oli Thompson in a heavyweight bout. The result was a violent finish that left Oleinik staring up at the lights. Thompson (21-16 MMA) unleashed a crushing right hand that sent Oleinik crashing to the canvas with 35 seconds remaining in the opening round. Check out video of the finish below (via Twitter ): Oli Thompson destroys Alexey Oleynik with a massive right hand in the first round pic.twitter.com/AdWy25dQxR — caposa (@Grabaka_Hitman) May 26, 2023 Thompson, 43, returned to the win column for the first time since 2020, snapping a four-fight losing skid. His last victory was also a first-round stoppage; a 23-second knockout of Szymon Bajor at Fight Exclusive Night 28 on June 13, 2020. Oleinik, 45, competed in his final UFC bout in Octo...
Read more

Logan Paul, KSI to fight (separately) as part of Misfits Boxing 'The Prime Card'

Logan Paul and KSI will top an upcoming Misfits Boxing card entitled “The Prime Card,” they announced Friday on social media . The event takes place Oct. 14 at AO Arena in Manchester, England and streams on DAZN pay-per-view. Opponents for the two influencers-turned-boxers have not yet been announced. It is unclear if the bouts will be professional or exhibition. Paul, 28, has not competed in a professional boxing match since he fought and lost to  KSI in November 2019. The bout was a rematch of an August 2018 amateur fight which ended in a draw. In June 2021, Paul competed in an exhibition bout against Floyd Mayweather and went all eight rounds in a non-scored bout. While he’s been relatively inactive in boxing, Paul has thrilled fans with his athleticism in intermittent appearances in pro wrestling bouts for WWE. KSI, 30, has competed four times since the pro bout against Paul. All four of those matches were exhibitions. KSI won three of them inside the distance, while a f...
Read more