UFC 292 Beforemath: Can Sean O’Malley Adjust to Aljamain Sterling’s Wrestling?

UFC 292 has the type of headliner that we just love to see. We have a budding superstar in Sean O'Malley coming up against an incumbent champion and a stylistic nightmare in Aljamain Sterling. O’Malley comes in hoping to realize his potential and become the bantamweight champion. Sterling has the opportunity to end his bantamweight reign on top before moving on to featherweight.

In today’s Beforemath issue, we are looking at the main event of UFC 292 and hoping to answer some key questions about the fight. How can O’Malley avoid Conor McGregor’s fate from his fight with Khabib Nurmagomedov and not get mauled? Will Sterling be able to weather the storm and get his hands on O’Malley?

Giving Up Your Back Is a Major No-no

O’Malley has the foundation to be a UFC superstar and transcend the brand. His striking is dynamic and exciting. He’s got an outrageous personality. Winning the title at UFC 292 would put him over the hump and certify him as the best in the world who walks the walk and talks the talk. But the fight with Sterling is stylistically a nightmare for O’Malley. A wrestling heavy fighter who doesn’t throw hands, but instead kicks, is going to give O’Malley trouble, but the tools possessed by O’Malley can get him through this fight. It will require discipline, intelligence, and grit. This will have to be the best fight O’Malley has ever fought.

This analyst’s main concern with O’Malley is in how he turns his back when he’s taken down. Against Petr Yan, a decent grappler in his own right, and during that fight he turned his back multiple times. Often in MMA, it’s common to turn the back and fight the hands to thwart a takedown or to go to the turtle to build a base up. Let’s put it plainly: turning your back to Aljamain Sterling is almost certainly death. Once he gets back there, it’s going to be a long ride and survival is the key.

So how does O’Malley stay away from any sort of clinch situation with Sterling? It is easier said than done and anything I put down here will seem like an easy plan to implement. But in reality, this is the crux of the whole fight and the title is riding on it. The first suggestion to keep Sterling off is for O’Malley to gain respect of Sterling with his hands. Good thing for O’Malley is that his hands are among the UFC’s best.

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Sterling doesn’t like to go backwards but will if poked at. Often in the second Yan fight, Sterling was backed to the fence as Yan came forward with a high guard. O’Malley, who has a great 1-1-2 (seen above) can use this to land as Sterling gets to the fence. Throwing out the double jab will allow O’Malley to cover more ground than Sterling can give up and coming behind with the cross as the power shot will pour the damage on.

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O’Malley also is notorious for letting low kicks land. His fast and mobile stance plagues him with the same issues that Stephen Thompson has and he eats a bunch down low. O’Malley has had a workaround for some time by leading with his head sometimes and shortening his stance up. But make no mistake, checking the leg kicks is something that he’s going to have to do. He showed a foundation of this with Yan and I look for it to be even better at UFC 292.

O’Malley will also want to rely on his footwork to keep himself out of harm’s way against Sterling. Sterling will come forward a good portion of the fight and it will be up to O’Malley not to get caught against the fence where Sterling can give him the opportunity to turn his back, which O’Malley will do. Exiting on the angle and pivoting out from a forward-marching Sterling can keep him out of this type of trouble.

Against Yan, O’Malley managed to consistently pivot off and exited at an angle. The most extreme came in round three and will illustrate our point the best. (1) Both O’Malley and Yan are in southpaw, putting them in a bladed stance. (2) O’Malley will step in and lead with the left cross. Doing so, (3) he will drag his rear foot around Yan and then will (4) finally pivot his right leg again and put him to orthodox. This extreme of a pivot will likely get O’Malley in a clinch situation, what he’s avoiding. Instead, he can pivot out and away from Sterling, landing pot shots and piling up points as he does.

Offensively, O’Malley is tantalizing with all the options available. A switch hitter, O’Malley’s looks are like no other in the bantamweight division. He will assuredly come with some looks that Sterling has never seen before. Knowing that Sterling often doesn’t throw hands and will opt for kicks, the longer weapon, O’Malley will have to start work from there. So how do we punish the kick? For that we will look to Dustin Poirier’s first fight with Justin Gaethje.

In the original fight between Poirier and Gaethje, Gaethje hammered home inside low kicks that did little to nothing for Gaethje while letting Poirier find the left cross. (1) Gaethje would step in after pressing Poirier to the fence and (2) throw his right leg into the thigh of Poirier. This allowed Poirier to keep his balance, plant off his back foot and (3) fire a cross into the chin of Gaethje. This was the beginning of the end of Gaethje and Poirier finished the fight seconds later.

The reason this kick doesn’t quite work as well as the outside low kick that we will discuss later is because kicking the thigh allows O’Malley to keep his balance and opens up Sterling for the cross. He’s caught on one foot, and his balance will not be as easily kept. Exposing the chin, especially when Sterling throws those kicks across the body, will give O’Malley a chance for some damage and keep himself in the fight as it goes later.

Last point I’d like to discuss is the stance switching of O’Malley. He consistently goes from southpaw to orthodox coming forward. But as we will see in the next section, that isn’t always advisable. O’Malley will have to be able to concede ground to Sterling as he looks to clinch up and duck under the shots of O’Malley to get the takedown. For this, we look to the featherweight king: Alexander Volkanovski. Volkanovski is the best in the world at the shift and O’Malley would be wise to pick up a thing or two from his last fight with Yair Rodriguez.

Against Rodriguez, an opponent who comes in with blistering kicks similarly to Sterling, Volkanovski throws a step up low kick to the inside of Rodriguez’ leg. (2) As this lands, we see that Rodriguez is thinking the right thing and will fire a cross. The problem is, Volkanovski being as good as he is threw the step up low kick to the inside despite it being the less superior kick. Throwing it allows him to (3) step back from orthodox into southpaw, notice his right hand is the lead now. Doing this as Rodriguez is on one leg allows the right lead hook to land clean and wobble Rodriguez.

O’Malley can utilize these tricks and more of Volkanovski’s in the fight with Sterling. Volkanovski used a lot of the shifting backwards and quick stance switches to fool Islam Makhachev, another wrestler. Though the fight will be hard for O’Malley, a path to victory is clear with safe footwork, a smart striking approach, and discipline to not give his back up.

Size Matters

Everyone knows that Sterling will have the size advantage going into UFC 292. O’Malley is a fast and hard striker and if Sterling gets reckless like he has in the past, could see himself moving to 145 coming off of a loss, but Sterling has fought some of the best in the division. His last five fights have been against guys who have either touched the normal or interim title. He’s fought the best. But heavy lies the crown of an incumbent champion taking on the next potential superstar of the sport. This has shades of McGregor-Aldo to it, but I don’t expect to see Sterling crumble in 13 seconds. Instead, I can see Sterling making a huge statement on a huge stage.

So how to do this? How does Sterling beat O’Malley? The main way for Sterling would be to take away the tools of O’Malley that are better than his which are his hands. He has to make O’Malley hesitant to strike. This is one of those sneaky things that Sterling does exceptionally well.

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To start his attack, Sterling uses a kick-heavy attack and we talked about those kicks in the previous section. Sterling will have to make sure that his kicks aren’t to the inside or risk getting battered from a heat seeking missile of a cross. The low kicks will have to be the step-up low kick if he’s in a mirrored stance (southpaw vs. orthodox) or a roundhouse to the outside in a bladed stance.

Using Gaethje and Poirier again, we can see the differences in the types of low kicks above. In frames 1 & 2, we see Gaethje throwing the inside low kick and leaving himself open for the counter. This type of low kick cost Gaethje the first fight. In frames 3 & 4, Gaethje steps up with his rear leg and smashes the outside of Poirier’s knee, preventing the cross and allowing Gaethje a similar step back like the Volkanovski one from earlier.

Instead, Sterling likes to draw these counters out as he advances and ducks under for a takedown. He did this to great effect against Yan in the rematch. Sterling would get to the legs enough to get the takedown at crucial times.

Yan was happy to be pushed back and look for the counter. (1) As Sterling advanced, Yan would dip low and telegraph the left hand. (2) As Yan overextends on the punch, Sterling ducks under and (3) gets to the single leg takedown. Should Sterling get to these spots against O’Malley, he can force a clinch situation and get him to turn his back instinctually. This will let Sterling get his hooks in and start that tumultuous backpacking that all of his opponents find themselves in.

O’Malley is also a very tough opponent to get a hold of. He’s constantly shifting, moving, circling, feinting and doing everything to keep his opponents from being confident in their decisions. Sterling needs to be confident that he can scare O’Malley from meaningful counters if he shows that the clinch is a hellacious place for him to be. Even pushing and grinding O’Malley out against the fence is a great idea for Sterling who would be wearing on the gas tank of his opponent and also banking minutes on the scorecard.

Of course, there’s the hands too. We saw that O’Malley is very hard to hit. Fortunately, we discussed this exact situation a couple weeks ago when Rob Font took on Cory Sandhagen.

To retread that, when an opponent is moving around too much, grab the single collar tie and pull them into the uppercut. Font is a jab-heavy fighter and uses it as the setup. I expect Sterling to forgo that and just grab the tie straight up. (1) We see Adrian Yanez pushing forward on Font and Font cannot keep him off. He was getting pieced up and Yanez was looking like he was about to start running away with the fight. Font (2) throws out the jab and (3) grabs the single collar tie when it misses. Being the savvy veteran he is and knowing what he has, (4) Font hammers home the uppercut that would ultimately put Yanez away.

While this alone won’t work on O’Malley, threatening the clinch, takedown, and then throwing this into the mix would do well for Sterling. Having O’Malley spend a round with Sterling on his back only to survive and have to deal with a disrespectful Sterling marching forward looking for clinches with missile uppercuts coming his way could be too much to deal with.

With the high-profile nature of this matchup, O’Malley has a major uphill battle to fight. While Sterling has asterisk by almost all of his title wins, he is still an incredibly skilled fighter and the best in the world. It’s really Sterling’s fight to lose. But O’Malley may end up taking the hands of Marduk, an ancient Babylonian tradition to legitimize the rule of a new king. Or the old king, the battle-tested Sterling, could go out there and maul the prodigal son and make sure him holding a title would always only mean he was second best.