At one point, UFC bantamweight champion Sean O’Malley admired and looked up to Conor McGregor.
It appears he even patterned his flamboyant style after the two-division champion. Those days of admiration and warmth toward McGregor appear to be in the past, as O’Malley unleashed a nasty assessment of his former idol’s fighting skills in a post on X on Monday.
Following a poke from McGregor, O’Malley posted this in a short string of X posts aimed at the former.
The two men had exchanged insults, but in the most recent situation, McGregor appeared to mock O’Malley on social media.
In a now-deleted post, McGregor added a laughing emoji as he quote-reposted a clip of O’Malley claiming he received information about Ostarine contamination potentially coming from a sweat transfer.
I took a screengrab of McGregor’s post before he pulled it down.
O’Malley tested positive for a banned substance twice, most recently in 2019. He was suspended for the violation but has always maintained that he never knowingly took a performance-enhancer.
The banned substance O’Malley tested positive for was Ostarine. This drug hopped into the consciousness of combat sports fans after it was found in Ryan Garcia’s A and B samples before and after his fight with Devin Haney in April.
McGregor has been a staunch critic of fighters associated with PEDs, and he once grouped O’Malley into that category. O’Malley candidly responded to that criticism from McGregor but admitted it made him “sad.”
This time, he seemed more prepared and armed with comebacks for the MMA icon.
All insults based on some level of truth cut a bit deeper, which makes a few of the things O’Malley identified particularly notable.
He acknowledges that McGregor is on another level from an entertainment standpoint and recognizes the brilliance of the Irishman’s left hand. However, O’Malley takes aim at the cardio that has seemingly failed McGregor in some fights, like the first battle with Nate Diaz, and the questionable jiu-jitsu, which may have contributed to losses to Diaz and Khabib Nurmagomedov.
The accusations of drug use and mental weakness are especially personal, but it is the kind of mind games McGregor regularly plays with his targets, so it would be unfair to scream foul.
The fact that we’ll probably never see these two face each other in an Octagon almost makes this feud a tease, but it will draw eyes whenever a pair of the sport’s biggest stars are at odds.
Per McGregor, the injured toe that pushed him out of UFC 302 is healed (though he deleted that post, too), and there is hope he’ll be back in the Octagon before the end of the year. As for O’Malley, he is expected to headline Noche UFC in a title defense against Merab Dvalishvili in September.