Sean O'Malley is one of the UFC’s most popular fighters today. There are many reasons why that’s come to be, but perhaps the biggest was how his UFC-contract-winning performance was presented.
O’Malley joined the UFC after his impressive first-round knockout of Alfred Khashakyan was enough to seal the deal on the second season of Dana White’s Contender Series in 2017. What really pushed O’Malley into the spotlight that night was rapper Snoop Dogg’s reaction while he served as an alternative commentator – along with Urijah Faber – for the event.
“Oh, huge. Massive, massive,” O’Malley told “The Breakfast Club” when asked what role played Snoop Dogg in his rise to stardom. “It’s crazy how my career has played out. That was the beginning of the craziness. Snoop Dogg is commentating on my fight when I was 21, 22 on the Contender Series.
“It’s the first time they’ve done it. I knock that dude out, and he yells ‘O’Malley’ like 30 times. That was crazy.”
After the win at DWCS, O’Malley got to hang out with Snoop Dogg and take a picture, which put a bow on his arrival in the UFC.
“I don’t even remember, I got so high,” O’Malley said, attempting to recall hanging out with Snoop. “We were in the trailer, and they just kept passing it. I walked out of the trailer, and there were a bunch of cameras. A bunch of people around. I hadn’t smoked, probably for three or four weeks leading up to a fight. I just got a crazy knockout. I just got signed to the UFC. Now I’m smoking with Snoop and when I was leaving the trailer, that felt like a movie. That was crazy. I don’t remember what we talked about at all.”
O’Malley definitely did his part to live up to expectations after that. He beat notable names such as Eddie Wineland and Petr Yan en route to a title shot. He then knocked out Aljamain Sterling to become UFC bantamweight champion in August, which has all fed into the growing hype around “Suga.”
O’Malley returns to the octagon in March at UFC 299. He’s scheduled to take on Marlon Vera, who’s the only man to beat him. Vera stopped him in the first round of their co-main event clash back at UFC 252 in 2020.
