Sean O’Malley named the key to beating Aljamain Sterling

“If I can take this fight in the standup, I’m going to win, one hundred percent,” O’Malley told ESPN. “In the stand-up I’ll beat him, but he’s damn good in the grappling, so if the fight goes to the parterre, I’ll have to survive until the end of the round. I don’t underestimate him and I know how good he is. I’ve seen, we’ve all seen what he can do in the parterre – he choked Corey out in six seconds, so I’m well aware of how good he is. I believe it’s going to come down to whether he can move me or not in the end. It’s a matter of life and death – I have to do everything in my power to keep him away from me.”

“He makes a lot of mistakes in the stand-up and I believe I can find his jaw. He races a lot, it’s no secret – he’s a big guy and his normal weight is 165-170 pounds (75-77kg) and I weigh 155 pounds (70.3kg). By nature he’s bigger than me, he has to race a lot and it’s bound to affect the strength of his jaw. I’m a real expert at finding my opponent’s jaw and knocking him out in the first round, or at least dropping him. I’ve dropped Eddie Wineland, Jose Quinones, Thomas Almeida, Chris Moutinho in the first round. All of them I dropped, finding their chin pretty quickly. So it’s going to depend on which one of us makes the mistake first.”

“Aljo will run at me from the start and try to take me down because he knows very well how dangerous I am in the standup. I, on the other hand, will be cold-blooded and ready to kill. Aljo is lucky we’re fighting in the cage. If we were fighting on a soccer field, I’d knock him out every time. Our fight plans are no secret. Kill or be killed, it’s as simple as that.”

As a reminder, the title fight between Aljamain Sterling and Sean O’Malley will be the main event of UFC 292, which takes place on August 19 in Boston.