Song Yadong doesn’t care about Sean O’Malley’s mind games.
A winner in three of his last four, ‘The Kung-Fu Kid’ will look to earn the biggest win of his career when he meets O’Malley in the UFC 324 co-main event on Saturday, January 24.
Last month, O’Malley made headlines when he stood face-to-face with Song while wearing a medical face mask at a press event — an apparent callback to the days when President Donald Trump stoked fears about the 2020 COVID-19 outbreak that originated in China.
During his UFC 324 media day interview, O’Malley apologized for the incident.
“My intentions were never harmful,” O’Malley said. “It was supposed to be a small, lame joke. It was, and it was edited out – I apologize if I offended anyone.”
Asked for his thoughts on O’Malley’s action and subsequent apology, Song quickly dismissed the drama.
“Sean is very good at promotion,” Song said during his media day interview. “He likes to play little mind games, do things directly, talk a lot online. I don’t really care. I’m not here to play games with him, I’m here to fight. When the cage door closes, it’s just me and him, and all that talking and all that show isn’t helping him. I won’t let what he does take my attention away.”
With a win over Song Yadong, O’Malley believes Petr Yan will be next
While Song was coming off a somewhat controversial victory over former champion Henry Cejudo last year, O’Malley will look to snap a two-fight losing skid for the first time in his MMA career.
Should ‘Suga’ climb back into the win column at UFC 324, a rematch with reigning bantamweight king Petr Yan could be in his future.
“The next step is me against Petr,” O’Malley said. “If I go there and take care of business. If not, I don’t know. I just feel like I’m trying to manifest that. I think I go there and put on a beautiful performance, me versus Petr in the White House is huge.”
O’Malley scored a sketchy split-decision victory over Yan in October 2022, which ultimately led to his title-winning performance against Aljamain Sterling at UFC 292.
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