Sean O’Malley responds to critics who claim his UFC 292 TKO win over Aljamain Sterling was an early stoppage

Sean O’Malley has responded to people who think his UFC 292 TKO win over Aljamain Sterling was stopped too early.

O’Malley was fighting Sterling for the bantamweight title in the main event of UFC 292 in Boston. Heading into the fight, ‘Suga’ was a sizeable betting underdog, and not many fighters had confidence in him getting the job done.

Yet, Sean O’Malley proved the doubters wrong as he scored a second-round TKO win to become the new champion. However, some fans and fighters said it was an early stoppage, which O’Malley disagrees with, and has a theory as to why people think it was an early stoppage.

“Yeah, I saw some (talk of an early stoppage),” Sean O’Malley said on the Pat McAfee show. “It’s no one that wanted me to win saying it’s an early stoppage. It was mostly people that wanted me to lose. The same with the people that said I didn’t Petr Yan were the same people who didn’t want me to beat Petr Yan. I could go out there and kill someone and they would say, well he could have resurrected or something.”

Although some people think it was an early stoppage, Sean O’Malley did drop Aljamain Sterling and landed some heavy ground-and-pound. O’Malley also revealed he hurt his hand by all the ground-and-pound hammer first shots he was landing.

“I landed that right hand. I’ve knocked enough people out that I know when they are f*****g out, I knew he wasn’t, but I knew he was very hurt,” Sean O’Malley said. “If I would’ve dropped him and I didn’t think he was that hurt, I wouldn’t follow up on the ground right there because of how good he is, even off his back. Ideally, he wants to be on top, but that dude can grapple off his back, he’s a black-belt grappler. He’s very good everywhere. I knew I had him hurt enough where I could start hammer-fisting. My left side of my hand is very sore from bouncing it off his head like 17 times.”

Ultimately, early stoppage or not, Sean O’Malley got the TKO win at UFC 292 and became the UFC’s bantamweight champion.