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UFC Bantamweight fighter Sean O'Malley has backed away from a grappling match against Bellator's James Gallagher.
UFC and Bellator fighters often call each other out on social media and interviews, but such fights rarely come to fruition for real. Fortunately for fight fans, events like Submission Underground offer a platform for such cross-promotional fights to become reality.
Chael Sonnen invited fighters to face Sean O'Malley at Submission Underground
Chael Sonnen said awhile back that he has locked down on UFC star Sean O'Malley for a fight on his grappling event, Submission Underground, which can be seen on UFC Fight Pass. Now, all he needed was a UFC or Bellator fighter willing to go up against Sean O'Malley in a grappling match.
Sonnen promised to "take [O'Malley's] best skills away", which is known to be his striking, and make it a pure grappling contest to give any of the willing challengers a better opportunity to secure a win.
"One guy that I have locked down — "Suga" Sean O’Malley. Now just to break that down for you, this is a grappling event, Sean is a boxer-slash-kickboxer. I’m going to take his absolute best weapons away and give somebody the opportunity to get a ‘W’ over one of the rising stars in the sport."
"I have a deal with Sean. I will bring him out, walk him out there, and raise his hand by forfeit if nobody’s got the balls to take him on. I’ve told him I’m going to write him a big fat check on December 20th, and I am! So any of you guys that are out there chirping…if you’ve got a contract with Bellator or UFC, and you want to try to fight a guy, and I’m going to take his best skills away, I need to hear from you."
James Gallagher claims Sean O'Malley turned him down
Shortly afterwards, Bellator star James Gallagher shared Sonnen's clip on his Instagram story and said "Anyone BUT me." He claimed that he had agreed to a deal to fight Sean O'Malley, but the latter ducked out of the contest.
Later, James Gallagher spoke to Severe MMA and said that after seeing the video of Chael Sonnen calling fighters out for a SUG bout against Sean O'Malley, he talked to his team and to Sonnen as well. O'Malley however, did not want to take the fight, despite Sonnen's claims that he was all set to fight "anyone".
"I seen [sic] the video of Chael Sonnen calling ‘anyone’ out to fight Sean O’Malley in a grappling match. So, then I went to my team, they went to Chael, we made a deal, and now all of a sudden now he (O’Malley) doesn’t want to compete on the show."
