Sean
O’Malley is highly-confident in his skills — and for good
reason.
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The counter right hand that dropped Aljamain
Sterling in the second round of their title bout at UFC 292 was
a thing of beauty, and it set the stage for O’Malley to claim the
bantamweight throne on Saturday night at TD Garden in Boston.
“Punching backwards is a skill not a lot of people possess and I
can punch going backwards and I knew he was going to be pressuring
me and I know he likes to throw to shoot,” O’Malley said at the UFC
292 post-fight press conference. “He likes to throw for me to
counter so he can shoot under. So I knew he was going to be lunging
in with shots.
“It really wasn’t even a bad punch that he threw, it’s just I’m
that f—-ing accurate. I sniped him. I’ve been saying all week, I’m
a sniper. I’m going to snipe his chin. I’m going to find it and
there we were. That’s definitely a punch I visualized all
week.”
Making the victory that much more impressive was the fact that
O’Malley wasn’t able to work on his grappling during training camp
due to an upper body injury. However, it wasn’t something that was
going to keep him from fighting for a UFC belt.
“I haven’t grappled in six weeks. I had a muscle strain and I
literally couldn’t grapple for six weeks, couldn’t MMA spar,”
O’Malley said. “I was the main event in Boston. There was no chance
I was pulling out. But we haven’t grappled in six weeks. Six weeks
[ago] today, I had a muscle strain right under my rib and I
couldn’t grapple. So coming into this fight and fighting Aljo, when
I did interviews, I was saying, ‘Life or death: I cannot get taken
down,’ because I didn’t know if it would hold up – and it’s f—-ing
sore right now.”
Ultimately, O’Malley was able to thwart Sterling’s attempts to
grapple, and that allowed him to find the ideal opening to finish
the fight.
“I thought the longer the fight stayed on the feet, the better
chance I had of knocking him out,” O’Malley said. “I knew I’d get
him frustrated, him not being able to grab me, I thought he was way
too confident that he was going to be able to come in and just grab
me. I don’t know if he’s ever sparred someone as good as I am or
fought someone as good as I am.
“I truly believe I am a level above most people in the striking
department and I just felt like he was very confident because he
had never experienced—It wasn’t his fault, he’d just never
experienced someone that fast in front of him.”