Sean O’Malley recalls the general reaction in the summer of 2017 when he declared prior to his Dana White’s Contender Series audition that he’d be bigger than the biggest star the UFC has ever seen. “I remember sitting there vividly doing an interview telling people I will be bigger than Conor McGregor ,” O’Malley said Monday on ESPN’s “First Take.” “I got a lot of crap for it. There was definitely a lot of hate online saying, like, ‘Come on, man, that’s not realistic.’ But in my mind it was. I just knew I had to do the things that I’ve been doing, which is knocking people out, putting on beautiful performances, and I would get there.” Fast forward six years, and the ever-popular O’Malley (17-1MMA, 9-1 UFC) is the new UFC bantamweight champion after dethroning Aljamain Sterling by second-round TKO this past Saturday at UFC 292. O’Malley’s crowning achievement is the culmination of UFC tenure that, so far, has been full of trash talk and flashy knockouts
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