‘Sugar’ Sean O’Malley shares screenshot from fabled sparring session with UFC 301’s Alexandre Pantoja

Ahead of Alexandre Pantoja’s next flyweight title defense, ‘Sugar’ Sean O’Malley released a screenshot from a past sparring session between the two titleholders. 

This Saturday night, Pantoja puts his 125-pound crown on the line against unlikely title challenger Steve Erceg in the UFC 301 headliner in Rio de Janeiro.

The fight comes five months removed from a successful defense against Brandon Royval at UFC 290 in December.

Days before their highly anticipated clash in Brazil, Sean O’Malley shared an image from a 2015 sparring session where ‘Sugar’ is said to have folded ‘The Cannibal’ with a perfectly placed liver shot.

At that point, Pantoja had not yet made his UFC debut but already competed in 18 fights as a professional mixed martial artist whereas O’Malley turned pro the same year he threw hands with Pantoja in the gym.

Tim Welch Reveals How Sean O’Malley Put Down Alexandre Pantoja

Sean O’Malley’s longtime coach Tim Welch offered some insight into the incident on his YouTube channel, confirming that ‘Sugar’ promptly put Pantoja down during the encounter.

“[He wasn’t] really in fight camp at all,” Welch said on his YouTube channel. “Going to sparring to get a few rounds in and Henry [Cejudo] is like, ‘Hey, you want to spar this guy?’

“So Sean says ‘Yeah, I’ll spar him.’ They spar one round, Sean comes out on a rip, puts him down. Puts him down in the first minute. Now mind you this is — I don’t even remember what year this is — I don’t even think Sean was a professional yet, he might have been a professional just breaking in. Sean comes out there, bounces around, young buck. Boom, hits him with a liver shot, puts him down.

“Pantoja has to stop, he has to wave it off, go over to Henry, kneel down, call it off. I mean there’s a video, never released video but he puts him down” (h/t MMA Mania).