Sean O’Malley is a big figure in the bantamweight division as the former 135-pound kingpin embarks on a key fight in terms of informing his trajectory in the weight class, and a newly minted Rizin champion has weighed in. Ilkhom Nozimov is the RFF champ in question and actually replicated O’Malley’s style for Petr Yan during training sessions at Tiger Muay Thai ahead of the O’Malley vs. Yan clash from years back.
As someone who is quite familiar with ‘Suga’s style and when asked for his thoughts on O’Malley’s looming bout with Song Yadong at UFC 324 on January 24th, Nozimov said [via Bowks Talking Bouts],
“Yeah, I like Sean O’Malley, I like his style. I believe we have some similarities, but also Song Yadong is pretty, pretty tough opponent, hard guy. And whoever going to impose his fight style that night, he’s going to win.”
Sean O’Malley responds to being bumped up to the UFC 324 co-main event
Sean O’Malley is now in a more prominent position within the card’s hierarchy at UFC 324 and recently offered up his thoughts on that restructuring. With Kayla Harrison pulling out of the initially scheduled penultimate fight of the night vs. the returning Amanda Nunes, O’Malley vs. Yadong is now situated in the co-main event slot. With O’Malley’s combat cache and the UFC kicking off their new media rights deal with Paramount, ‘Suga’ made sense to slide into that vacant second-to-last spot on the card.
While the superstar has stated he is on social media far less these days, O’Malley’s social media presence was used to convey his thoughts on this recent shift with the UFC 324 bout placement. The former bantamweight titleholder posted a video that intimated a more subdued and tempered sentiment around being bumped up the card via a wacky video he is accustomed to posting on his social media.