Sean O’Malley Reveals Severity Of UFC 222 Foot Injury

Rising bantamweight contender Sean O’Malley extended his unbeaten streak at this past weekend’s (March 3, 2018) UFC 222 from Las Vegas, scoring a decision victory over Andre Soukhamthath on the pay-per-view main card.

“Sugar” certainly put on a solid performance, blasting Soukhamthath with a mixed offense of flashy punches, kicks, footwork, and stances, but he didn’t exit the Octagon unscathed. In fact, he was taken out of the cage on a stretcher due to what appeared to be quite a serious foot injury.

It didn’t stop him from living it up at his post-fight after party, but the hyped prospect could still be out for awhile.

On today’s (March 5, 2018) edition of The MMA Hour, O’Malley revealed more details regarding the injury:

“The foot has been pretty much hurting since the fight,” O’Malley said. “They said it wasn’t broken, but they said I’ve got a previous fracture in there from before the fight, so I’m gonna figure out what’s wrong with it. It’s hurt pretty much nonstop, so we’ll see.

“I didn’t (know it was previously fractured). Every fight I’m in I throw a lot of kicks. I land with my feet a lot, I’ve had a lot of foot issues because of that. I’ve had a lot of foot injuries so I wasn’t surprised.”

As far as when the injury took place, O’Malley feels as if he busted up his foot a bit in the opening two rounds, and by the final frame, he admits that he couldn’t feel his foot:

“I think I landed a few kicks with my foot on his knee in the first round. I think I hurt it a little bit in the first, a little bit in the second and then finally, I couldn’t use it in the third,” he said. “It was a super weird feeling. I couldn’t feel my whole foot when I put it on the ground. Every time I put pressure on it, it wasn’t there — it was super weird. It sucked.”

Moving forward, O’Malley is unclear when he’ll return to action given that he still needs more answers regarding the injury, but he confirmed that his focus is solely on healing:

“What I understand is it would be better if it was broken because it would be easier to heal than ligament tears. I think I would almost rather it would be broken, but we’re going to check it out and we’ll see where we can go from there,” O’Malley said.

“Just getting this foot healed, that’s my focus 100 percent,” he added. “I’m just putting my attention into healing this foot, eating right and making sure my body is healing right, just getting healthy and getting back to training. I’m not thinking about anything other than that.”