Sean O'Malley's reason for avoiding ranked fighters is calculated – and makes sense

Sean O'Malley has been heavily hyped ever since he earned his way into the UFC with a highlight-reel knockout win on Dana White’s Contender Series back in June 2017.

Four years and six fights later, O’Malley is 5-1 in the UFC. His lone defeat happened under unfortunate circumstances of being injured in the first round of his fight with Marlon Vera. Aside from that, though, it’s been mostly smooth sailing for O’Malley.

For as talented and exciting as he is, O’Malley, 26, remains unranked at bantamweight, and that’s largely because he has yet to fight anyone who’s in the official UFC rankings. O’Malley’s most recent bout in July at UFC 264 was a late third-round TKO against tough promotional newcomer Kris Moutinho after Louis Smolka was forced to withdraw.

For his part, O’Malley (14-1 MMA, 5-1 UFC) indicated that the reason he hasn’t leveled up in competition is partly because he knows better – in that he makes the same amount of money per fight, regardless of who’s in the cage with him.

“Next fight, a lot of people want me to fight someone ranked,” O’Malley said recently on the “No Jumper” podcast. “They wanted me to fight someone ranked last fight. I was supposed to fight Louis Smolka (at UFC 264). For me, I have a contract to fight a certain amount of fights, and I’m gonna get paid a certain amount of money whether I fight Louis Smolka, the dude I was supposed to fight, or I fight Petr Yan, the No. 1 bantamweight in the UFC. I get paid the same. I’m gonna fight this dude (who is lower). And I’m going to fight this dude on a Conor McGregor pay-per-view.

“Chael Sonnen always says fight the worst dude on the highest part of the card. A lot of bantamweights, and just people in the UFC, they definitely hate, and it comes from jealousy. I’m getting way more eye balls than them. I perform in there. You can go and watch some of these guys perform, and you literally pick up your phone, start surfing Instagram, you just don’t give a f*ck what they’re doing.”

Perhaps that will change soon, with talk of the UFC wanting to book O’Malley’s next fight against No. 8 Frankie Edgar. But to O’Malley’s point, what’s in it for him to make that jump?

Without knowing details, perhaps O’Malley’s desire is to keep building his name by beating lesser fighters until his contract is up – or until the UFC is ready to talk about a new deal, whichever comes first. At least then he’d have an opening to negotiate a better deal before fighting ranked opponents.

Fans won’t want to hear this, but it’s smart for O’Malley to do things his way and at least try to grab what little leverage he can by putting himself in the best position to succeed.

It’ll be interesting to see how things continue to unfold with O’Malley’s career.

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