Alexandre Pantoja recently doubled down on his claims of defeating Sean O’Malley in sparring.
Pantoja and O’Malley have feuded in the past over the outcome of a sparring session six years ago. Pantoja claims he defeated ‘Sugar’ during a sparring session in preparation for the Brazilian’s Ultimate Fighting Championship debut.
O’Malley, on the other hand, completely denied that theory, claiming that he stopped Pantoja with a liver kick in the first round.
Pantoja is currently scheduled to defend his flyweight title against Steve Erceg (12-1) in the main event of UFC 301 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. When “The Cannibal” was asked about the possibility of moving up to bantamweight in the future, he reiterated his position about his sparring sessions with O’Malley.
Pantoja claims that former champion Henry Cejudo was told by O’Malley that he would never receive sparring footage. Pantoja admits that otherwise moving up to 135 pounds doesn’t mean much to him, but he’s open to the idea of a showdown with the bantamweight champion.
“Right now, the bantamweight champion is Sean O’Malley and I have a relationship with him,” the 34-year-old recently told Shakeel Majuli. “Before I start talking about O’Malley, he talks about me first. And I couldn’t understand how he started talking. [sparred] I was with him in my first fight in the UFC six years ago.and he [said] There were some bad things about it, and it’s crazy because he recorded the sparring.and [at] Me at the end of sparring [said]”Send me the video so I can see your training.” And he didn’t pass the training to me. Then I asked, “Hey, Cejudo, could you talk to your friend for him?”
[to] Please send the video. And Cejudo said to me, “He’s not going to send it to you, brother, you’re going to beat him, he’s not going to send it to you.” I said, “Okay, okay, that’s it. It doesn’t matter.’ ”
Pantoja added: “I’m never thinking of going up to bantamweight. It doesn’t make sense to me. There are huge opponents at flyweight. But the only thing I can imagine going up to bantamweight is O’Malley’s bad That’s why I’m going to fight him.”
O’Malley most recently defended his title for the first time following a lopsided unanimous decision win over Marlon Vera at UFC 299 last month.
