Sean O’Malley is ready to go the entire 15 minutes with Petr Yan, but ‘Suga’ is confident he will get a KO win, according to his coach Tim Welch.

O’Malley is set for the toughest test of his career as he’s set to face the former champ in Yan – who’s also ranked one at bantamweight, on October 22 at UFC 280. If O’Malley can get the win, he could get a title shot his next time out. The fight announcement also caught many by surprise but Welch revealed it was the UFC’s idea to make the bout.

https://twitter.com/LynchOnSports/status/1579563396965740544

“Sean Shelby texted Sean shortly after the Pedro fight saying ‘hey, Dana and I have a great idea.’ It took a day for them to call and then they called him and said ‘how about Petr Yan in Abu Dhabi? He’s the only one in the bantamweight division top 10 that doesn’t have a match, so what do you think?’ He called me, called the coaches and we said ‘f**k yeah, let’s do it,’” Welch said about O’Malley-Yan to Middle Easy’s James Lynch.

Once the fight was made, Sean O’Malley started studying Petr Yan and got into training camp and he gained confidence. According to Welch, O’Malley is ready to die inside the Octagon but they believe ‘Suga’ will get a KO win to become the top contender at bantamweight.

“Sean’s prepared mentally and physically to go 15 minutes with Petr, he’s ready to die out there. He knows tough Petr is,” Welch said about O’Malley. “But, if I had to put money on it and had to guess, I would guess Sean is going to knock him out.”

Sean O’Malley is coming off a No Contest against Pedro Munhoz back in July at UFC 276. Prior to that, ‘Suga’ was on a three-fight winning streak as he beat Raulian Paiva by TKO, TKO’d Kris Moutinho, and knocked out Thomas Almeida.

Do you think Sean O’Malley will KO Petr Yan at UFC 280?