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Sean O'Malley made headlines when he said he deserved half of bantamweight champion Aljamain Sterling's UFC 280 pay-per-view money for being a bigger draw. Interestingly enough, 'Funk Master' agrees that O'Malley deserves a share.
In a new video posted to Sterling's YouTube channel, he joked:
"He's undefeated, he's never had a no contest. I don't know. I feel like we all owe him a piece of that bread, so... Sean, like I said, I'm going to contact my financial advisor, 25% of my pay-per-view sales are going to you. I'm gonna talk to Dana, we're gonna chop it up, we're going to make sure we get the metrics right, though. Then we can figure out how to get you paid."
After the statement, Sterling got serious and added:
"Let's be honest: he does [deserve points] though. I think anyone that's on the PPV card is on the PPV card for a reason. They're not putting someone on the PPV for s***s and giggles. They're putting people on there that can move the needle in some sort of way."
The UFC's current pay model only gives champions a small cut of pay-per-view sales, with a few very rare exceptions like Conor McGregor. Even though fighters like Sean O'Malley and Paddy Pimblett are clearly major drivers of ticket and pay-per-view sales, they'll never get a PPV percentage unless they become champions. As Aljamain Sterling pointed out, it's not exactly a fair system.
Watch Aljamain Sterling discuss Sean O'Malley's words below:
Sean O'Malley calls for Aljamain Sterling to hand over his pay-per-view points
In a recent episode of Bromalley, Sean O'Malley made it clear that his fight against Petr Yan at UFC 280 was a much bigger draw than Aljamain Sterling's fight against T.J. Dillashaw. 'Sugar' said:
“I think this is going to be the first time Aljo gets pay-per-view points, because he’s defending his belt, which is absolutely f***ed. He owes me like 50% of those. The UFC basically said when they announced my fight, they’ve seen the interaction and engagement of social and everything, the thing just went boom [gestures straight up]. My fight is the most hyped fight on that card."
Becoming a UFC champion is hard and holding onto the belt is even harder. The reward a champion gets for defeating the best of the best is a percentage of the pay-per-views sold.
Until O'Malley has a belt wrapped around his waist, he won't get a percentage. That's just the reality of it. A win against Petr Yan at UFC 280 would certainly put him much closer to winning a championship, though.
