Sean O’Malley was back in action at UFC 324, taking a big decision win over Song Yadong to put himself back in the title picture at bantamweight. But if the UFC wants him back in the cage for anything other than another championship fight, they’re gonna have to pay him more.
That’s the word from O’Malley, who went on the Ariel Helwani Show and discussed his contractual status with the promotion and what’s next for him in his career.
“You know, you sign a contract and you fight, you have a certain amount
of fights on your contract, and it’s hard once you sign that contract,” O’Malley said. “You can’t fight five times, four times, and then complain, ‘Hey, why am I getting paid this much?’ Like, we sign contracts. You fight contracts out. At some point, you renegotiate your contract.”
“And I still got a couple fights left,” he continued. “I think I have two more fights left on my contract. UFC doesn’t really like when fighters fight out their contracts, because then you’re a free agent. So I feel like I’m at a point right now, I signed a new contract before [fighting Aljamain Sterling] … got two more fights on my contract, and I feel like I’ll probably renegotiate before my next fight.”
After UFC 324, O’Malley said he was planning to wait for 135 pound champion Petr Yan to rematch Merab Dvalishvili in the hopes that he’d be next up for the belt. But a sweet pay bump for “Suga” would make him a lot less championship-focused.
“Obviously, I want Petr Yan,” he said. “But the thing is, if there was a bigger fight, if I would make more money fighting someone else, I’d want that. I want the title. The amount of money I was making as a champion compared to not champion is significant. I was making a lot more money as a champion.”
“I wanna fight for the belt, or pay me the same amount as I would for a title fight and I’ll fight Cory [Sandhagen]. For me, this has been a business since the beginning. Since day one, I have wanted to make as much money as possible. Right now, the way my contract’s set up, I make a lot more money fighting for the title.”
This is how the UFC has operated for years: the champions make the real money and everyone else struggles to clear a million or two per fight. But as a legit needle mover, Sean O’Malley definitely deserves to be paid more regardless of whether there’s a belt around his waist or not. And if the UFC wants its top names fighting more — and thus moving the needle for Paramount+ more — they’d be wise to earmark some of that $7.7 billion in media rights money to keeping guys like him happy and active.
“At the end of the day, UFC tells you what to do,” O’Malley concluded. “It’s not like I’m sitting there saying no this, no that. Like, I would ask. I would negotiate. I would say, ‘Hey, is there any way I can make the same amount of money?’ And go from there.”
