Sean O’Malley appears to have a new lease on life after seeing Petr Yan defeat dominant bantamweight champion Merab Dvalishvili and now sees a path to fighting for the title at the UFC: White House event in June next year.

The 31-year-old O’Malley had been left in an awkward spot earlier earlier this year when he convincingly lost to Dvalishvili for the second time in a row, all but shutting him out of the title picture for the time being.

However, Yan’s unexpected victory over Dvalishvili earlier this month now brings him right back into the mix.

The only catch is that O’Malley already has a fight booked against Song Yadong at UFC 324 on January 24th.

Nevertheless, appears to be fired up now that he can see light at the end of the tunnel.

“Dude, I just have a whole new energy, I’m very f****** excited about this fight,” O’Malley said on his podcast. “When Petr beat Merab, I got a whole new level of just like, mental switch and hunger.

“I’m gonna go out there and beat Song, and then me vs Petr at the White House.

“I just don’t see any other [fight] and I could be wrong, it just makes sense… Who else are they gonna have on the White House?

“[Alex] Pereira’s not on the card, Ilia [Topuria] is not gonna be on the card.

“Conor [McGregor], who knows? Jon Jones supposedly isn’t gonna be on the card. Who the f*** else are they gonna have?”

It is a fight that would make sense as O’Malley is a marketable fighter who already holds a split-decision win over Yan at UFC 280 in 2022 that paved that way for his own title win the following year.

with that in mind, Yan might also be eager to run that fight back, but on the other hand the UFC may feel that Dvalishvili deserves an immediate rematch with the Russian instead given that he was on a very long winning streak prior to his loss, which included a convincing victory over Yan in 2023.