Aljamain Sterling believes Sean O’Malley ‘would do really well’ at 145, explains callout for rematch

Following Sean O’Malley’s submission loss to Merab Dvalishvili, Aljamain Sterling let it be known—very respectfully—that after O’Malley heals up and takes a break, he would love the chance to run it back with O’Malley in the featherweight division.

Sterling was in the corner of Dvalishvili this past weekend for the bantamweight champion’s exceptional title defense against O’Malley in the main event rematch of UFC 316. One of the big questions going in to—and coming out of—UFC 316 had to do with the future of O’Malley if he lost to Dvalishvili a second time: Would “Sugar” stay at 135 and try to get a rare third shot at the champion of the division, or should O’Malley take a swing at 145?

For Sterling, who made the move up following his title loss to O’Malley at UFC 292 in August 2023, he believes O’Malley could have success in the featherweight division.

“I think Sean would do really well at 145, and I’m not saying that because I would love to run it back, because that’s obvious,” Sterling told MMA Fighting. “But I think his speed, his length would translate really well. He will be able to actually lift a little bit more to get stronger. The only thing is there are some dogs at 145 that if they grab a hold of him, they already know how to grapple.

“I think there are more grapple-heavy guys that he will have to deal with like a Movsar [Evloev], or myself, a Chepe [Mariscal], Steve Garcia when he takes you down and gets in top position. Lerone Murphy is not much of a grappler, I know Bryce [Mitchell] is going down, obviously Ilia [Topuria], he’s now up at [155], but I think there’s a little bit more depth for guys that can grapple. Even Youssef [Zalal] is not a bad grappler, the David Onama guy when he gets to the top position, so it really just depends on what he wants to do.

“I do think he would have success. Would it be as much success as [he’s had] at 135? I don’t know. It’s hard to say because those guys are obviously smaller than him in terms of reach and everything, but his athletic ability and his fight IQ, I think it’s pretty good, where he would do relatively well at 145. And it just depends on the weigh cut, right? I don’t know how much that weight cut really affected him, but I know for me being super lean, it killed me. Like, even today, I woke up at 160, which is insane. I’m like ridiculously light. I’m lighter now than when I was fighting at 135.”

Sterling says that watching the UFC 316 main event from the corner, and even in the re-watch of the fight, that he didn’t see a big difference between the O’Malley who fought Dvalishvili at UFC 306 this past September to the second time around—which Sterling feels is mostly because of how impressive Dvalishvili was on Saturday.

Responding to a fan who suggested a rematch between Sterling and O’Malley at featherweight, Sterling replied he loved the idea, but only when O’Malley is in the correct headspace. “Funk Master” says he got a lot of blowback from the public, and was a bit surprised about it.

“Yeah [I was surprised, but] I mean, it is what it is,” Sterling said. “People are people and they’re probably all just diehard O’Malley fans, which, I mean, I get it if you want to defend your guy that you love, but I don’t think I said anything wrong or distasteful, whatsoever.

“And again, I’m done with that chapter of O’Malley. If he’s comfortable with riding off into the sunset with the win, him and I both know they stacked the deck against me. Obviously, I took the fight and rolled the dice, and it didn’t work out for me. So I would love the opportunity to just do it again at favorable terms for both of us. This way, we’re both even going into the fight, and then we can really see who’s better cause if people think Merab’s grappling and pace is good, I mean, I think the Movsar fight is a pretty damn good indicator of what that fight should have looked like, and then even the fight with [Calvin] Kattar. I mean, Kattar is a little bit more stationary of an opponent.

“But I think there’s those two performances, my performances before that [are indicators where if] I get my hands on you, it’s a different [fight]. That was such a bad headspace that I was in in that fight with O’Malley. I tried to trick myself into thinking I could rah-rah myself into wanting to be there, and then when I got in there, I was just like, I’ve got to poker face and pretend, and even in the corner, I was just kind of like, ‘I just want to get this over with, man. I really just want to go home.’

“Sure enough, I do an ugly, very, just uncalculated strike and Sean cracked me with a beautiful right hand and that’s the game, man. And again, even for him, he shouldn’t come back unless he’s mentally ready to want to fight again, because [if] you go in there not wanting to compete, it’s going to be a bad night.”

Since making the move up to featherweight, Sterling is 1-1 in his new division, including a lopsided decision win over Calvin Kattar at UFC 300, and a close decision loss to Movsar Evloev at UFC 310 this past December.

Whether an O’Malley rematch is in the cards, or not, Sterling is ready to fight as soon as the UFC gives the word.

“Man, I’ve been ready since... I literally texted my guys asking for a fight since January and I knew I needed a little bit of time off to just heal up,” Sterling said. “It’s like every fight, my shoulder’s pretty bad—the one I had the surgery on—so every fight, it kind of gets tweaked a little bit where I need to give it a little bit of a break and do a little rehab to get it back strong again. I sent a message in January, I was ready to fight. Then March comes around for the March card. I asked about that from January, and I was pretty much told I could take my foot off the gas a little bit and then I got offered a short notice fight against [Patricio] Pitbull towards the beginning of February, where I was already partying and putting on my other hat as a businessman for my brand, my spirit, Funk Harbor [rum].

“And a lot of people might not know, but I actually funded this whole thing, so it’s my own hard-earned money. So, of course, I’m going to give it love and attention. So I took time off to make sure I was focused on that, and I wasn’t training the way I should have been training, and I kind of kicked myself in the ass a little bit about that because that was a great opportunity for me to fight a former champion in Pitbull, and I missed the opportunity. So I asked about April, didn’t get April. I asked about the June card for Jersey, didn’t get that.

“I’ve got a bachelor party coming up now. I’m getting married at the end of the year. There’s a lot going on, so I’m ready to go. I was in fight camp with Merab pretty much the whole time, so I’m in shape. I could do three, [five-minute rounds] easy. I could probably even do five, fives no problem. But I’m ready. I’ve just been waiting, ready for these guys to give me a name. Obviously, I would like to fight a guy on the level of a Movsar in the sense of the rankings, like Brian Ortega, Arnold Allen, names that make sense. I’ll even go fight Lerone Murphy because, somehow, he’s now ranked ahead of me. If that’s a name that they want me to fight, I’m open to it.”