Tim Welch admittedly accepts most of the blame for Sean
O’Malley’s lone career loss against Marlon Vera.
But the ankle wraps his fighter wore in the bout also share some of
the responsibility.
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O’Malley suffered a stoppage loss against Vera in 2020 after a leg
kick from “Chito” compromised his lead leg. “Sugar” refuses to
acknowledge the loss to this day, dismissing the kick as a fluke
strike that damaged his peroneal nerve.
O’Malley’s coach, however, believes other factors contributed to
the damaged nerve. According to Welch, minutes before the fight,
O’Malley had complained twice about his ankle wraps being too
tight. While they made small adjustments, Welch believes they were
still too tight, which stopped the blood flow to O’Malley’s
leg.
“I got to take a lot of the blame on this,” Welch said on his
YouTube channel channel. “One of the UFC people
wrapped his ankles, and a couple times – ‘Sugar’ usually never
complains about anything — a couple times he said ‘This ankle wrap
is too tight.’ He said it twice. So, after the second time, I had
the guys cut a little bit on the top, cut a little bit on the
ankle, and I thought for sure it would loosen up. We were done with
our warmup, they said we were walking in five minutes, so we did
feel a little rushed. Looking back, 100%, I should’ve said ‘Hey,
take that wrap off, and let’s re-do it. The fight can wait, let’s
re-do this wrap’ because if you’ve ever had your ankle wrapped too
tight, the blood just can’t flow to it, and it feels like your foot
is literally falling asleep. So, imagine being in a fistfight and
your foot is fully asleep.”
After winning the bantamweight title against Aljamain
Sterling, O’Malley sought to avenge his loss against Vera in
his first title defense, which earned him some criticism.
Nevertheless, O’Malley puts his strap on the line against Vera in
the main event at UFC
299 at the Kaseya Center in Miami on Saturday.
“This fight was four years ago. And I tell you what, this is a
completely different kid than he is now,” Welch said of the
rematch. “Now he’s a got a lot more explosiveness to him. He’s got
a lot more muscle, he’s got a lot more durability and now he’s way
more efficient with his energy. He knows how explosive he is, and
if you’re not careful, then you can run out of juice quick. So,
confidence wise, now ‘Sugar’ is a whole different animal, and we
can’t wait to get this back. We can’t wait to get this back.”