Sean O’Malley says he would love to beat Umar Nurmagomedov up to make Conor McGregor ‘jealous’.
McGregor has a bitter rivalry with Umar’s cousin, Khabib, who defeated him in their lightweight title fight at UFC 229. Since then, ‘The Notorious’ has been calling for a rematch with the now-retired Eagle, who is currently coaching the next generation of Russian fighters, including Umar, who is just one step away from capturing UFC gold.
At UFC Abu Dhabi, Umar beat one of the UFC bantamweight division’s top contenders, Cory Sandhagen, to solidify his spot as the number one contender. ‘Young Eagle’ will likely face the winner of the upcoming bantamweight title fight between O’Malley and Merab Dvalishvili at UFC 306.
If Sean O’Malley gets past Merab, he’d love to face Umar since beating him would give the reigning 135-pound champ a chance to accomplish something McGregor couldn’t: defeating a Dagestani fighter.
“It looked like [Nurmagomedov] did win but again that was a very close fight,” O’Malley said on his YouTube channel. “Cory is, in my opinion, one of the best pound-for-pound guys in the world, so for Umar to be ranked No. 10 — which, a lot of the guys wouldn’t fight him, so I’m not surprised that he didn’t have that many high-level fights up until this or at least high-level, popular opponents. No one in the UFC wanted to fight this guy.
“Incredible performance by both guys really. Cory did a really good job shutting down Umar’s offensive takedowns and wrestling. Striking was pretty close. Umar looked like he landed harder shots. That’s as high level of a fight as it gets.”
O’Malley and McGregor have been at odds every since the Dublin native brought up the American’s failed drug test in 2018.
