It is preferable to the alternative. If you’re going to suffer in a mixed martial arts fight—and odds are good, you are—better to do so as the beater, and not the beatee. So it was that, back in September, when Sean “Suga” O’Malley talked offhandedly of his “pretty serious” hand injuries, describing a forthcoming MRI the way you and I might describe picking up milk at the store, he was quick to note the source. “It’s from where I was hammer-fisting him.”
More specifically, on Aug. 19 in Boston, O’Malley blasted his opponent, Aljamain Sterling, then the UFC bantamweight champ (at least for a few more seconds) with his specialty punch, a right hand, cocked quickly and deployed with murderous intent. The punch connected. Sterling fell to the canvas. O’Malley pounced. In less time than it will take you to read this sentence, O’Malley unleashed a barrage of fists that collided violently with various parts of Sterling’s face. By the time the referee mercifully stepped in to stop the fight, the UFC didn’t just have a new 135-pound belt-wearer on its hands; it had a new star.
Cooper Neill/Zuffa LLC/Getty Images
