Sean O’Malley shuts down Cody Garbrandt fight, claims the former champ has CTE

Sean O’Malley doesn’t have much interest in facing Cody Garbrandt next.

O’Malley and Garbrandt have taken shots at one another over the past year and that continued at last month’s UFC 269 press conference. So, after Garbrandt was knocked out by Kai Kara-France in his UFC flyweight debut, he hinted at possibly moving back up to 135lbs to fight O’Malley.

“I think if I went to 35, I would do things a little differently. Keep my weight up throughout the camp. There’s a lot of good matchups. Sean O’Malley, I really want to whoop his ass. That’s a fight that’s looming,” Garbrandt said on a podcast. “Hopefully, that could possibly be my next one. I want that fight so I’d like to stay at 35. He might fight me now because I’m not in the rankings at 35 and he’s ranked so that’ll be a good fight. You got to respect his skills, he leveled up a little bit with the Raulian fight, caught him early on, but we know that. The only way he was gonna win was catching him early on and he did that. He did his job, hats off to him. He’s now in the rankings so I have to go back up to 35 and whoop his ass, but we’ll decide, we’ll figure it out.”

Image Credit: Screenshot UFC

Now, after hearing about Cody Garbrandt’s callout, Sean O’Malley says unfortunately he isn’t interested in the bout. Although beating a former champion would be big for his resume, he doesn’t think beating “No Love” does much for him. “Suga” also believes the former champ is suffering from CTE, which added to his disinterest in facing him.

“Dude, Cody wants, he’s not getting that fight (with me). When he said it, you could see in his voice, ‘Oh, I want, uh’ – but that fight’s not happening. It doesn’t make sense for him to say that. I wonder if that’s CTE. He’s been knocked out five times in the last two years. That fights not happening, at least, not next. He needs to – it just doesn’t make sense, dude. It just literally doesn’t make sense,” O’Malley said on the TimboSugarShow.

O’Malley certainly has a point that Garbrandt’s stock has fallen off. However, there is no question a scrap between the two would be massive.

What do you make of Sean O’Malley rejecting a fight with Cody Garbrandt?