Sean O’Malley’s rotating roster of MMA superstars has grown once again as his coach revealed they had none other than Demetrious Johnson at the gym to help him prepare for UFC 316.
Last time Sean O’Malley was training for Merab Dvalishvili at UFC 306, there was nothing coming out of his camp but leaks that “Suga” was ‘having trouble’ and seriously injured. Now we have tons of footage of “Suga” cutting it up with GOATs like Israel Adesanya and now “Mighty Mouse.”
While it was certainly cool to have “The Last Stylebender” in camp, fans were a bit worried O’Malley might be spending too much time on his striking and not enough time preparing for the wrestling onslaught that Dvalishvili is famous for. Will having some work with Johnson, one of the best at flowing between grappling and striking, silence those criticisms?
We doubt it, but it’s a testament to the quality of fighters coming through O’Malley’s camp that he’d have “Mighty Mouse” show up.
“I learned a bunch from him just in the clinch,” O’Malley coach Tim Welsh revealed on a Red Hawk Recap video. “He pressures you so hard, forces you to reach out for him, to reach out and grab him, and as soon as you reach out and grab him, he just rifles those knees up the middle. That’s one thing that really surprised me is just when I grabbed a hold of him.”
“I was asking him some questions in the clinch and he was just moving around, doing all these different things. I’m like f—k, he’s a black belt in the clinch.”
O’Malley has done a lot of things right leading up to this fight. He’s switched off social media, shunned his internet celebrity status, and has upped his physical and mental health game. But the most important difference between UFC 306 O’Malley and UFC 316 O’Malley? This “Suga” isn’t showing up on fight night with a torn labrum.
That means he can actually wrestle for this training camp and take advantage of all the advice being shared by his training partners. We’ll have another two weeks until we know if it’ll be enough to earn him a win over “The Machine” in New Jersey, though.
