UFC President Dana White is ready to take Sean O’Malley to the next level.
That will require “Sugar” to hold up his end of the bargain and defeat rough-and-tumble bantamweight veteran Pedro Munhoz at the UFC 276 pay-per-view (PPV) event this Sat. night (July 2, 2022) inside T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada.
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BLOCKBUSTER CHAMPIONSHIP DOUBLEHEADER! Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) International Fight Week returns to T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada, on Sat., July 2, 2022, capped by a stacked card headlined by a blockbuster championship double header. In UFC 276’s pay-per-view (PPV) main event, reigning Middleweight champion, Israel Adesanya, defends his crown against No. 2-ranked contender, Jared Cannonier. In the co-main event, Featherweight champion, Alexander Volkanovski, has his sights set on successfully defending his title once again against No. 1-seeded contender, Max Holloway, for the third (and likely final) time.
After that? Nothing but Top 10 matchups.
“For O’Malley, when you think about it, we were just talking earlier about how nasty every one of these divisions are in the UFC right now,” White told Yahoo Sports. “Absolute killers in the Top 15. So O’Malley wins this fight this weekend. He beats Pedro Munhoz. That breaks him into the top 10. Then you’re looking at guys like Song Yadong, Rob Font, Merab (Dvalishvili), (Marlon) Vera again, Cory Sandhagen. I mean, (Jose) Aldo….”
Aldo fights Dvalishvili at UFC 278 in October.
O’Malley, 27, cut his teeth on Season 1 of White’s “Contender Series” back in summer 2017 and now stands at 7-1 under the UFC banner (15-1 overall). The power-punching “Sugar” is coming off three straight victories, all by way of knockout.
Munhoz (19-7) has dropped four of his last five.