Sean O’Malley‘s lopsided defeat to Merab Dvalishvili at UFC 306 has raised concerns about his future, drawing comparisons to Conor McGregor‘s decline after losing to Khabib Nurmagomedov and highlighting the critical importance of O’Malley’s next fight for his career trajectory.
Sean O’Malley doesn’t operate under the same spotlight as most fighters in the UFC. So, the expectations for his fights are always heightened.
While a loss is devastating no matter the stakes, O’Malley falling to Merab Dvalishvili in fairly lopsided fashion at the historic UFC 306 card from Sphere in Las Vegas was probably a worst-case scenario for him. Prior to the event, O’Malley touted himself as the heir apparent to Conor McGregor as the biggest superstar on the UFC roster. But getting thoroughly handled by Dvalishvili and losing his title earned him another comparison to the former two-division champion from Ireland.
“O’Malley also has the Conor McGregor curse,” Alan Jouban explained on the latest episode of The Fighter vs. The Writer. “Where he is not the hammer, and he becomes the nail, and if that opponent starts to style on them, and when they’re not styling and they’re getting styled on, it defeats them.”
While O’Malley has engaged in an all-out war with Petr Yan in the past, he’s mostly dominated his competition in the UFC. This included his knockout win over Aljamain Sterling to win the title. That all changed on Saturday night with Dvalishvili taking him down six times with over 10 minutes of control time during the fight.
“Sean O’Malley is used to doing fadeaway threes after the knockout,” Jouban said. “Sean O’Malley in the middle of the fight dribbling the basketball. The best sniper, the precision. When he’s getting taken down, and Merab’s kissing him on the head and he’s doing the lookaways for the kicks, he was getting styled on and the mental warfare, the subtleties there for a guy that’s a star, when somebody steals your shine, it kills those types of guys.
“He has similarities to Conor, great ones but he’s also got the Conor McGregor curse where you take away a star’s shine and you watch them just wither right there. He wasn’t up for the big show in this matchup because of that. Merab did everything right in the fight physically but mentally as well. He took that confidence away from O’Malley.”
Jouban viewed O’Malley’s loss to Dvalishvili in a similar fashion to McGregor being defeated by Khabib Nurmagomedov back in 2018. On that night, McGregor was dismantled by Nurmagomedov before succumbing to a fourth-round face crank that ended the fight.
Following that loss, McGregor sat out for 15 months before finally returning with a win over Donald “Cowboy” Cerrone. But then he suffered back-to-back defeats to Dustin Poirier.
Despite those setbacks, McGregor is still a massive draw but he’s never come close to reaching the same heights in the sport as he had prior to falling to Nurmagomedov six years ago.
That’s at least part of the reason why Jouban believes O’Malley’s next fight might end up being the most important moment in his entire career.
“I don’t know what Sean’s mentality is going to be,” Jouban said. “How soon does he want to fight again? I believe this — he got dethroned on Saturday night on the biggest platform any fighter could ever be on, this one of one [event at] Sphere. He got dethroned. That’s going to take something away from him.
“Now he still has the opportunity to come back so [let’s say] they give him Cory Sandhagen and now it’s a striking affair and it’s who’s the smoothest dance partner. We wanted to see how he would fare against an all-out grappler. He didn’t pass the test. Now we give you a somewhat favorable matchup. You want to strike, you didn’t like the takedowns, here’s Cory Sandhagen. If he loses to Cory Sandhagen, Sean will never be the same. Now he’s lost to the grappler. Now he’s lost to the striker. There’s no more. It’s not a fluke with the leg [injury against Chito Vera]… if Cory Sandhagen knocks you out or out points you in a striking affair, I think O’Malley’s never the same.”
Because O’Malley has always carried such confidence into his fights, Jouban can’t help but wonder if that changes after Dvalishvili wrote the book on how to beat him.
From repeated takedowns to ground control to a relentless pace, Dvalishvili never allowed O’Malley to settle into any kind of a rhythm while landing only 49 strikes over five rounds compared to 214 for the new UFC bantamweight champion.
Like it or not, Jouban believes O’Malley now has to prove himself again if he wants to return to title contention in the near future.
“That was a pivotal moment in his career Saturday but I think it’s more pivotal this next fight, this next matchup,” Jouban said. “Because you have to come back and win in dominant fashion and say ‘I want to reclaim my title.’ But if he loses two in a row and different type of matchups on the feet now, I don’t think the confidence is ever there. The swagger is gone.
“His next fight, if it does not go his way, I think O’Malley is not the guy that we thought he was. The career trajectory is gone. Two losses in a row would be detrimental for him.”