Best bets for UFC 292: Sterling vs. O'Malley
UFC 292 takes place this week from Boston, MA. The thirteen-bout fight card is rife with competitive matchups, and it features two, five-round world championship title bouts.
Last week, favorites realized a 9-4 result, making favorites on the year 194-99-14 or 63%. which is about average for a typical UFC year. Last year’s 67.5% favorite result appears to be just an outlier.
Aljamain Sterling -260 vs. Sean O'Malley +210
Bantamweight Championship (135 pounds) Main Event
Finocchiaro: There are layers to this bout, but whittled down to its most common denominator, what we have here in Sterling is an elite all-world grappler/wrestler who is an effective striker. He’s massive for the division, and with his size comes incredible strength supplemented by cardio that is seemingly unending.
Sterling is one of the most lethal bantamweight fighters in UFC history. He has been in with the absolute elite of the division and has cleaned them out. He’s extremely intelligent, focused, and he arrives swelling with confidence based on who he has defeated and who he is facing Saturday.
In second-ranked O’Malley, we have a long, tall athlete who effectively controls space/distance by utilizing his athleticism and fluidity of movement. O’Malley will be the younger, longer, quicker athlete in the cage Saturday.
Once this fight begins, O’Malley’s unique fighting style will be on display. He’ll flow and parry to create striking angles. He will use unorthodox timing to try to stun, surprise and bewilder the incoming Sterling with straight strikes and kicks.
O’Malley is a more singularly versed mixed martial artist despite the fact that he’s trained extensively on his takedown defense and ability to get back to his feet.
O’Malley acknowledges openly that his priority in this bout is to absolutely NOT allow Sterling to clasp onto him, press him against the fence, and, by all means, O’Malley is aware that he must not allow Sterling to drag this fight to the canvas.
If and when he does find himself there, he must be able to return to his feet, or this will be a short night.
For Sterling, he will want to take this fight right to O’Malley, and in a measured, steady, aggressive fashion, muscle him backward and force him to exert his energy defending and evading as opposed to flowing and striking.
The Sterling camp believes that as the fight wears on, O’Malley, who has never been five full rounds and in fact has had cardio issues late in three-round bouts, will begin to wane and as he does, Sterling will begin to press more.
Sterling’s focus is to systematically usurp the energy from O’Malley then in the late third or championship rounds when the kid is gassed and gored, find a way to take his back and then choke him into unconsciousness.
O’Malley’s camp realizes (rightfully so) that Sterling cuts massive amounts of weight to make 135 pounds. Further, in conjunction with the UFC, they cooked up the idea that this fight should take place immediately on the heels of Sterling’s dominant title defense against Henry Cejudo in June!
Sterling and camp feel pressured into the very quick turnaround here and have stated that the result of this will be that he’ll take it out on O’Malley who Sterling states is in this position only because of his “Dana privilege.”