Sean O’Malley downplays Cody Garbrandt’s UFC 250 KO: “There’s levels to striking”

Sean O’Malley firmly believes that his UFC 250 knockout win was better than the one Cody Garbrandt scored later on the main card.

O’Malley, an undefeated prospect, picked up a dazzling first-round knockout win over WEC champ Eddie Wineland in the pay-per-view opener. Garbrandt, the former UFC bantamweight champion, delivered a brutal, one-punch KO over long-time contender Raphael Assuncao in the co-main event.

In a video posted to his official YouTube channel, O’Malley broke down his knockout of Wineland—which he repeatedly deemed “sweet.” He then shared his take on Garbrandt’s knockout, which he evidently didn’t find as sweet.

“There’s levels to striking,” he said after imitating Garbrandt’s KO. “When you got power in your hands, you can just bend down and just throw something, and if it lands you’ll probably knock someone out. I choose pure, clean, technique, and speed. But they’re both cool.”

While O’Malley is confident that his UFC 250 KO trumped Garbrandt’s, Garbrandt unsurprisingly feels the opposite.

“Mine was way better,” Garbrandt told TMZ, comparing his KO to the one O’Malley picked up. “Way [more] vicious. My dude couldn’t get up.”

“I knew that as soon as I started that punch, the trajectory of where it was going, the force and the speed, it was going to connect and knock him out,” he added. “It was a picture-perfect punch and just a nice walk off.”

Garbrandt also feels Assuncao was a vastly superior opponent to Wineland, which adds some value to his win—though O’Malley evidently doesn’t agree.

“[Assuncao is] leap years ahead of any adversary [O’Malley] has ever fought,” Garbrandt said. “Hats off to him. He did good, went out there and performed, got a knockout victory … but you can’t compare when you’re fighting the Top 5 in the world.

“[O’Malley has] never fought anybody in the Top 15, so that’s a huge difference when you’re able to starch people like that at each level,” Garbrandt added.

Let’s hear it fight fans. Who picked up the better knockout at UFC 250: Sean O’Malley or Cody Garbrandt?