If you are who you say you are...
Despite most media, analysts and fellow fighters picking against him, Sean O’Malley is the new bantamweight champion. Despite a relatively tame opening round, O’Malley was able to show Sterling exactly what he needed to set himself up for a knockout victory that shocked the world and propelled him into true stardom rather than the psuedostardom that MMA champions are accustomed to.
Front Kicks and Feints
O’Malley’s feints and movement complimented one another wonderfully in this bout, particularly because of just how uncomfortable then-champion Aljamain Sterling looked when faced with a serious striking threat that could catch him at range.
The first thing that O’Malley shows is a hip feint. This is to say that O’Malley pumps his hip as if he were to throw a kick (in this instance, a front kick down the middle). This instantly establishes the threat that Sterling should most be worried about; strikes that punish his level changes. Indeed, much of O’Malley’s damage in the first round came from his stabbing front kicks. At worst, they keep Sterling well aware of the risk he takes in shooting for a takedown. At best, they’re timed perfectly to catch Sterling ducking his head down to waist level and pushing forward.
This can be seen in action during the below sequence. O’Malley brings his rear foot up into the air, feinting the front kick. Sterling, in response, throws his head to his right with his hands down and fires his weight forward momentarily, clearly aiming to shoot in for a takedown. The fighters reset and O’Malley immediately fires a real front kick to the spot where Aljo’s head would have been had he reacted the same.
O’Malley feints his front kick, steps through and prepares to bounce back for a counter much like the finishing sequence. Sterling dips out to his right, looking for a takedown. O’Malley then fires his real front kick at where Sterling’s head would be had he repeated this reaction.
Capitalising On Movement
Sterling’s reactions to the rest of O’Malley’s feinting weren’t much better. Visibly uncomfortable being stood in front of the dangerous striker, every shoulder or hip movement from O’Malley had Sterling leaping backwards and giving up the ground he’d been trying so desperately to cover.
O’Malley took advantage of this to open up more options for him. By simply feinting, O’Malley could: give himself space to circle out to the side, push into Sterling and regain the ground he’d given up or even shift through his feint, using his stance switching to chew up more ground and further threaten Sterling. Sterling’s insistence on big commitments with his kicks (sometimes even leaping forward with side kicks to push O’Malley backwards) allowed O’Malley a greater range of movement. O’Malley would simply wait for Sterling’s kick to come and move off the fence again, capitalising on the reality that Sterling is committed to the big movement and unable to effectively chase him down.
Sterling backs O’Malley up with a jumping front kick and follows him to cut off his exit. O’Malley creates some space with feints and waits for the inevitable big commitment from Sterling before making his escape.
Sterling being forced to commit to large movements to back O’Malley up stems from his lacking hands. His teammate Merab Dvalishvili used punching to bait former Sterling opponent Petr Yan’s hands away from his body, before dropping in on his legs as shown below.
Merab had been actively punching with Yan for some time and so his hands had a threat. His jab provoked Yan to shell up and leave his legs open to be shot upon.
During the rare moments in which Sterling was actually boxing, O’Malley clearly felt no threat. His hands remained low, presuming the punches to be a setup for a takedown attempt rather than punching for punching’s sake. If Sterling had been able to establish his hands as a respectable threat, he may have been able to use them to hide his takedown attempts.
Punishing Offence
Sterling opened this bout with a low kick, trying to buckle O’Malley’s suspect legs which have given out on him twice in previous bouts. He does this to varying degrees of success as O’Malley is able to avoid much of the low kick offence by simply withdrawing his lead leg and giving a little ground, a tactic utilised by Alexander Volkanovski and Brandon Moreno to name but a few.
However, Sterling reads this and notes that whilst he may not be able to land them with consistency, he can use them to back O’Malley up as is his aim. One sequence sees Sterling string together several low kicks together consecutively to cut off O’Malley. O’Malley responds quickly, firing off an oblique kick (or knee stomp) to Sterling’s knee. This is particularly nasty because Sterling is balancing on just one leg, kicking and planting all of his weight on the joint that’s getting kicked in laterally.
Sterling does continue low kicking as is clearly a large part of his gameplan (his corner insists that he keeps working O’Malley’s legs between rounds) but he strays away from being so predictable with it from then on and thus is unable to capitalise on utilising them to punish O’Malley’s defence as he planned to. He might have been able to string them on the ends of combinations if he’d thrown any but as established, Sterling failed to make his hands a threat in this bout.
Sterling throws the final of a string of low kicks. O’Malley retracts his leg and plants it behind him. He then uses the momentum to bounce off and spear it back at Sterling’s planted knee as he attempts to throw yet another low kick.
Sterling’s lack of a boxing threat became his undoing in the second round. O’Malley fired a standard lancing front kick to Sterling’s gut and Sterling attempted to chase the leg down as it retracted O’Malley back into a vulnerable stance. O’Malley used his lead hand to block Sterling from throwing with his lead, forcing him to overcommit with his rear hand instead. Sterling threw his rear left, (as he was southpaw), attempting to shift through for the takedown.
However, to shift through on a strike one must at one point square their stance (bringing their feet level), making them incredibly vulnerable to strikes. Here O’Malley found his kill shot, disregarding the punch coming his way as he had with all others, stepping back and blasting his right hand down at Sterling, with Sterling’s left hand away from his head and unable to defend.
Sterling overcommits on his left straight and leaves himself wide open for the counter that O’Malley had been looking for.
O’Malley’s ground and pound was intelligent, not falling into the MMA trap of getting over-excited and falling on top of his man. Instead, O’Malley made sure to hook Sterling’s far leg in order to stop him from scrambling away or worse, pulling O’Malley into a grappling exchange. From here, O’Malley had free reign to land countless shots onto Sterling (who, to his credit, took them rather well) until the referee had seen enough.
Closing Thoughts
More than most other champions, the world is now Sean O’Malley’s oyster. Whether he wishes to face more rightful contenders in Merab Dvalishvili and Cory Sandhagen or pick his storyline in an entertaining rematch against Marlon Vera, the world will undoubtedly be watching the continued rise of The Suga Show.
On Aljamain Sterling, I’m one of the people who genuinely enjoyed his time as champion. A deadly grappling game, typically scrappy striking and the ability to pull off victories against several stylistic nightmares in a row endeared me to him. I’d like to see him at 145 pounds even if not against reigning champion Alexander Volkanovski immediately, as the division desperately needs new contenders and Sterling can quite easily insert himself into that crop with a win.
One thing is for sure; the UFC’s bantamweight division has had new life breathed into it with the crowning of Sean O’Malley.
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