LAS VEGAS – According to Dana White, there’s no way he or the UFC could have known about Sean O'Malley’s injury prior to UFC 306.
O’Malley (18-2 MMA, 10-2 UFC) lost his bantamweight title to Merab Dvalishvili (18-4 MMA, 11-2 UFC) by unanimous decision in Saturday’s Noche UFC main event at Sphere. O’Malley was taken down six times and controlled for more than 10 minutes of the fight.
O’Malley later revealed that he tore his left labrum in his hip 10 weeks out from the fight, and he is scheduled to undergo surgery on Oct. 3. White was asked how the UFC could prevent fighters from competing injured moving forward.
“If these guys come in and they have something that we don’t know, I mean, how would the doctors check for a torn labrum? You know what I mean? You can’t,” White told reporters, including MMA Junkie after Dana White’s Contender Series 72 at the UFC Apex.
White insists that O’Malley looked flat and said a lot of others noticed that, as well.
“Literally everybody reached out to me that night and said Sean O’Malley didn’t look like himself,” White said. “He didn’t look explosive, he didn’t look, you know, all the same stuff we were all saying that night. Not to take anything from Merab, but I mean everybody felt that way.”
For more on the card, visit MMA Junkie’s event hub for UFC 306.
