Sean O’Malley got revenge over Marlon Vera for a 2020 TKO loss when he convincingly outpointed him to defend his bantamweight title at UFC 299 recently, but that doesn’t seem to have put an end to the bad blood between them.
Instead, Vera has since spoken out to accuse O’Malley of greasing prior to the fight in order to gain a competitive advantage.
“Who braid your hair @SugaSeanMMA,” Vera had originally asked O’Malley last week in a post on X. “You where grease to the bone I wonder how much gel they use?”
Vera then went on to elaborate on The MMA Hour show about his suspicions regarding O’Malley that night.
“I’ve braided my hair in the past, and if you braid it in a normal salon, they put an extremely big amount of pomade gel, whatever they use, to make it nice and tight,” Vera said on The MMA Hour. “When the UFC lady did my hair before the Frankie Edgar [fight at UFC 268], which is the main person that does everybody, she didn’t use nothing. She just went [with] a little bit of water. And when I finished the fight with Frankie, I was dry.
“Every time I was grabbing Sean, he was like grabbing a fish out of the water. It was just like, voom. And maybe he didn’t attempt to [cheat], but he was extremely greasy on his hair. And that’s why when I hurt him at the end of the round, I grabbed his head, the knee [slipped], all my knees [that slipped by] were really close. Maybe if it would’ve been dry, I could’ve hurt him. Maybe not. I’m still where I am for a reason — I lost the fight, and I’m not going to find [an] excuse, but matter of fact, his head was extremely greasy.
“Even if you see the post-fight interviews … his face was shiny, and after a fight, the Vasoline is over. It’s really over. I’ve been in, what, 23 fights inside the UFC? Once you get out of the cage, after you sweat it out, there’s no Vasoline. He was really shiny, and that can be something.”
And now O’Malley has responded to Vera’s accusations on his own podcast.
“Everybody seems to love this dude,” O’Malley said on his TimboSugarShow podcast. “Motherf*****’s a fake-ass b****. Chito sucks. F*** him. I know s*** that people don’t know that would change their minds on him, but I’m not gonna go out there and post it. The DM s*** was real. I was in his f****** head. I was his brain. I was thinking for him. People are, ‘Oh, he’s just a family man.’ F*** that guy, bro.
“Then he comes out saying I’m greasing my hair. Bro didn’t even get close enough to smell my hair let alone think I — what was greasing my hair gonna do?
“I’m just like, be the bigger man, you don’t need to ruin his f****** life, you already ruined his career. Just be the bigger man.”
While Vera appears to be laying down the foundations for a potential trilogy fight between the two in the future, for now O’Malley has his sights set on his next fight, and after backing down on his plan to fight featherweight champ Ilia Topuria he’s now preparing to take on Merab Dvalishvili instead.
“It’s so crazy that people think I’m ducking Merab, but I’m calling out Ilia,” O’Malley said. “I don’t get where they see — Ilia’s scary compared to Merab. Merab’s a dangerous fight, very well could f****** beat me. Anybody could beat me. Chito could beat me. Ilia could beat me.
“I just close my eyes and I can’t wait to see Merab standing across from me, seeing ‘Aljo’ just frowning in the corner. Seeing Matt Serra just sad. Ray Longo [expletives], ‘F***. It’s about to happen again.’ I can’t wait for that s***, baby.”
