Sean O’Malley has claimed that he may genuinely have considered retiring if he’d lost to Song Yadong at UFC 324 on Saturday night.
“Realistically you never know,” O’Malley said on About Last Fight when asked if a third loss in a row could have led to him hanging up his gloves. “If I would have lost, I’d be like these weight cuts suck, ‘F’ this. I don’t know if I would have been like that but it’s possible. I’m going to retire when I feel like OK, it’s time. If I would have lost, it could have been [my final fight]. I have such a good life back home, I could have just been like you know what [it’s time].
“That was a scary thought going into this fight that I even had that thought in my mind. Because it’s like how bad do I really want this? If it comes down to one of those moments on how bad do I want it, will I be able to push like I did in that Petr Yan fight? I got my answer tonight. I still do want it, and I proved that to myself. The only way I was going to be able to know that was if I had to dig deep and I did.”
The former bantamweight champion also admitted that he’d began to take winning for granted up until his back-to-back defeats by Merab Dvalishvili.
“My entire career, even as an amateur, I never lost,” O’Malley said. “Then coming off these two losses, I took winning for granted. I felt like I always won. Every fight I was just like what are we going to do for the after party? I’m going to win, I’m going to win.“
As such O’Malley said he really felt the weight on his shoulders to get back to winning ways on Saturday night.
“I was coming off two losses,” O’Malley said. “I did a good job not building it up too big. Because if I lose this fight, I still have a great life, I’m still OK but I can’t come off three losses. I can’t lose again. There was a lot of pressure — not a lot but there was pressure I put on myself.”
And when he did emerge with a unanimous decision victory over Yadong he made sure he didn’t let the moment pass him by.
“My lungs hurt from screaming [in celebration after beating Yadong]. I was just overwhelmed with emotion. Took winning for granted so it felt good to get a win against a really tough guy.”
