Sean O'Malley: Beating Umar Nurmagomedov 'a real good way to get at' Conor McGregor

UFC bantamweight champion Sean O'Malley thinks the best way to irk Conor McGregor would be to beat Umar Nurmagomedov.

It’s no secret how McGregor feels towards the Nurmagomedov family. McGregor was submitted by Khabib Nurmagomedov in their 2018 title fight in which a brawl broke out immediately afterward. The rivals never buried the hatchet, and McGregor continues to insult Nurmagomedov and his team, even though “The Eagle” has been retired since 2020.

O’Malley (18-1 MMA, 10-1 UFC) looks up to McGregor, but things took a weird turn after McGregor took a shot at him for testing positive for ostarine in 2019. O’Malley believes that McGregor is jealous of his rise to stardom, and he sees no better way to fire back at the UFC’s biggest star than by beating Umar, (18-0 MMA, 6-0 UFC) who just emerged as No. 1 contender after beating Cory Sandhagen Saturday at UFC on ABC 7.

“Me vs. Umar next? Question mark, hash tag, ‘We’ll see,’ Lol,” O’Malley said on his YouTube channel. “Figgy (Figueiredo) called me out, Ilia and Max are going to fight soon, undefeated Umar 18-0 vs. undefeated ‘Suga show 19-0, beat a Dagestanian. I wouldn’t mind that. That would be a real good way to get at Conor. Oh, imagine how jealous he would be? I might just go whoop Umar just for that reason alone.”

O’Malley defends his title against Merab Dvalishvili in the UFC 306 main event Sept. 14 at Sphere in Las Vegas. He was impressed with both Nurmagomedov and Sandhagen after they battled for five rounds in Abu Dhabi.

“Umar got the job done, pretty close fight in my opinion,” O’Malley said. “It looked like he did win, but again, that was a very close fight. Cory is, in my opinion, one of the pound-for-pound best guys in the world. For Umar to be ranked No. 10, a lot of guys wouldn’t fight him. So I’m not surprised that he didn’t really have that many high-level fights up until this.

“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. Overall, that’s as high level of a fight as it gets.”

For more on the card, visit MMA Junkie’s event hub for UFC on ABC 7.