Champ vs. champ?
That might just be the case as Sean O’Malley has responded to fellow champ Alexandre Pantoja. After winning the UFC Flyweight title from Brandon Moreno in July, Pantoja’s already shown some interest in a potential move up to bantamweight.
Pantoja On ‘Suga’
What better reason to move up than to challenge for double-champ status against the newly crowned UFC Bantamweight Champion O’Malley, who he apparently has a history with.
“If I have something that’s making me want to go to bantamweight, it’s this guy,” Pantoja said of O’Malley on his Instagram story. “He talks too much. He talk a lot of sh*t. If you know about this guy, he recorded my sparring with him and he never send me. You know why, yeah?”
Pantoja Gets A Reply
‘Suga’ would confirm that the sparring session did in fact take place, but it didn’t go Pantoja’s way.
“It’s def not cool to call out ppl below you in weight so I def won’t even mention that I’d knock Alex Pantoja out…. Again,” O’Malley wrote on ‘X’.
It’s def not cool to call out ppl below you in weight so I def won’t even mention that I’d knock Alex Pantoja out…. Again
— Sean O'Malley (@SugaSeanMMA) August 24, 2023
O’Malley Details Sparring Pantoja
O’Malley continued on with details of their spar, which he says happened all the way back in 2015.
“Does he want me to post it?” O’Malley said of the sparring footage on his podcast. “I finished him in the first round. I can post that.I wasn’t gonna bring it up, if that’s what he wants… That’s so funny. I mean, does he forget how it played out? I will say in the third round he choked me. But, dude I was like 1-0 or 2-0 as a pro. He was coming off ‘The Ultimate Fighter’ making his UFC debut two weeks out from his UFC debut. I was f*cking smoking joints the night before just like not expecting.
“Henry Cejudo and him roll into the gym, write my name down for two rounds. So I’m having to sparring this dude two rounds in a row. Not in camp, not in shape. [I] finish him in the first round. They’re f*cking pissed. Spar him again in the second round. I’m 100% gassed out from already whooping his ass. Henry’s yelling, ‘We want him for three, we want him for three!’ In the video I’m, do not sure if you can hear it, but maybe you can. Henry was saying, ‘hold off on the punches’. Like he said, I was punching him too hard.
O’Malley added on.
“So they get me to go to a third round, Benson’s at the corner going from the second to third round yelling, ‘they don’t come into this gym and we don’t get f*cking tired!’ And I’m gassed the f*ck out,” O’Malley says with a laugh. “So, he does choke me in the third round. This has gotta be 2015, like this is a long time ago.”
Would you like to see Sean O’Malley and Alexandre Pantoja run it back in the Octagon?
