Payton
Talbott is ready to take on tough competition to climb his way
up to a dream matchup against Sean
O’Malley.
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Talbott delivered a lopsided beatdown of Cameron
Saaiman to score a second round TKO win at UFC
on ESPN 53. With his second consecutive finish in as many UFC
outings, Talbott inched just a little bit closer to a potential
clash against thereigning bantamweight champ, whom the Reno native
had named as his “dream matchup” after his Contender Series win
last year. Talbott is willing to take on tough competition to make
it into reality.
“I just need to keep having performances like that [to get the
O’Malley fight], do my dirty work and just keep eating dogs like
that,” Talbott told media after the fight (video via MMAjunkie.com). “I know I need to put my time in and
solidify myself against game opponents, so I’m more than willing to
do that.”
While he is currently undefeated, Talbott called for a chance to
correct a loss against one “Ryan Hammers,” who seemingly beat him
in a streetfight when he was a teenager. Talbott then went on to
mention former champ Dominick
Cruz as a potential opponent.
“I don’t really know, I want my ‘0’ back against Ryan Hammers. Took
my goose egg when I was like 17 years old on the street,” Talbott
said. “I’m gonna go run that back at some point, but I don’t really
know. I don’t know too many people in my division so maybe like
Dominick
Cruz.”
Talbott began to land visible damage on Saaiman from the very first
shot he threw and continued to do so until the South African
crumbled. While he was somewhat surprised with the quickness of the
finish, Talbott was throwing with the intent to hurt Saaiman, who
he knew had undergone a recent surgery.
“I was gonna go after his head pretty hard because I heard he had
part of his face reconstructed,” Talbott said. “So that was like
part of the gameplan and I knew I was gonna be able to do some
damage to it, but I didn’t think it was going to be that early.”