Henry Cejudo claimed yesterday that Sean O’Malley’s star power isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, suggesting that the pay-per-view numbers for his bantamweight title-winning headliner against Aljamain Sterling at UFC 292 were underwhelming, but now the champ has now disputed that by getting his own numbers straight from the source.
“Guess what guys, I have friends at ESPN,” Cejudo had said on his YouTube channel. “… You guys want to know what Sean O’Malley’s buys did at pay-per-view? He did anywhere between 300K to 350K. That’s it. That’s all Sean O’Malley made in pay-per-view buys.”
However, in his response, O’Malley has claimed that Cejudo’s numbers are off by a considerable margin.
“I just talked to the UFC and I heard upwards of 570K,” O’Malley wrote on X. “… Not making this up. Heard Aljo vs. Henry did 135K.”
While ESPN doesn’t reveal the official PPV numbers for their events, O’Malley’s number appears to fit in more with Dana White’s claim that the event had been a major success on multiple levels.
“We broke the all-time gate record,” White had said at the post-event news conference. “Bruce Springsteen just played here and did $5 million, we did over $7 million. The Boston Garden. We’re the biggest thing other than – the craziest sports town on earth – other than their team that plays here, we’re the biggest thing that’s ever been here. So what does that tell you about O’Malley?
“This is also the biggest bantamweight championship fight ever on pay-per-view, globally. It broke the record. Biggest bantamweight championship fight ever.”
