Alexandre
Pantoja recently doubled down on his
claims of having gotten the better of Sean
O’Malley in sparring.
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Pantoja and O’Malley have gone back and forth in the past over the
result of a sparring session they had six years ago. Pantoja claims
to have bested “Sugar” during a sparring session leading up to the
Brazilian’s
Ultimate Fighting Championship debut.
Meanwhile, O’Malley has completely refuted that narrative, claiming
to have stopped Pantoja instead with a liver kick in the very first
round.
Pantoja is now scheduled to defend his flyweight title against
Steve
Erceg (12-1) in the main event at UFC
301 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. “The Cannibal” reiterated his
stance on the sparring session with O’Malley when asked about a
potential move up to bantamweight in the future.
Pantoja claims former champ Henry
Cejudo told him that he would never get the sparring footage
from O’Malley. While Pantoja admits that a move up to 135 pounds
doesn’t make much sense for him otherwise, he is open to the idea
of settling his beef with the bantamweight champ.
“Right now, the champion for the bantamweight is Sean O’Malley and
I have some history with him,” the 34-year-old recently told
Shakeil Mahjouri. “Before I started talking
about O’Malley, he talk first about me. And I don’t understand how
he started talking because I [sparred] with him six years ago for
my first UFC fight. And he [said] some bad things about that, and
that’s crazy because he recorded the sparring. And [at] the end of
the sparring I [said], ‘Hey send to me the video then I can see
your training.’ And he never passed the training to me.
Then I asked, ‘Hey Cejudo, can you talk with your friend for him
[to] send the video.’ And Cejudo said to me, ‘He not gonna send to
you bro, you smash him, he not gonna send to you.’ I say, ‘OK,
that’s OK doesn’t matter.'”
Pantoja added: “I never think about going up to the bantamweight,
doesn’t make sense for me. I have huge opponents at flyweight. But
the only thing I can imagine to go to the bantamweight is to fight
with O’Malley because he say something bad.”
In his most recent outing, O’Malley defended his throne for the
first time with a lopsided unanimous decision win over Marlon Vera
at UFC
299 last month.