Sean O'Malley (Photo by Elyse Jankowski/FilmMagic)
On Thursday night, Sean O’Malley won the ESPY award for Best UFC Fighter, and the MMA community was justifiably up in arms.
It doesn’t seem possible for any fighter in MMA to win Best UFC Fighter besides current light heavyweight champion Alex Pereira. Somehow, the ESPY voters picked O’Malley over Pereira.
The MMA community went to social media to voice their displeasure. Commentator and combat sports athlete Ben Davis posted, “over Alex Pereira?”
What a Bet said, “For beating Chito Vera? What about Alex Pereira?????”
Knockout of the Day replied, “nope,” and supported his simplistic rejection with Pereira’s amazing highlights from the past calendar year.
I could add hundreds more examples of similar responses, but it is clear that most social media users who follow the UFC believe the voters got this one wrong.
The first two questions we should ask when examining this injustice are who the voters are and what time frame was considered.
Let's tackle the first question. Before 2004, sports fans would've been the only ones to blame, as non-professionals entirely chose the winners. However, for the past twenty years, journalists (not me), sports executives, retired athletes, and ESPN personalities have been included in the voting.
Even if the public turned this into a popularity contest and O'Malley super fans flooded the voter's box, the list of sports experts and professionals should have righted this impending wrong, but that didn't happen.
To answer the second question, the judging criteria–from a time standpoint–is from June 2023 through June 2024. With that in mind, it makes even less sense for O'Malley to have beaten Pereira.
Over that time, O'Malley has fought twice. He won a unanimous decision over Marlon "Chito" Vera at UFC 299 in March, and he dethroned Aljamain Sterling via second-round KO to become the bantamweight champion at UFC 292 in August 2023.
That's a solid run, but let's point out O'Malley was badly hurt by a body shot in the fifth round of his win over Vera, though he did win the fight easily.
That detail matters when comparing O'Malley's year to Poatan's.
Pereira went 4-0 in the same timespan, fighting nothing but former world champions. The closest Pereira came to a defeat was his split-decision win over Jan Blachowicz in July 2023 at UFC 291. After that, Pereira mowed down elite competition.
He won the vacant 205-pound title over Jiri Prochazka in November 2023 at UFC 295 via second-round TKO. At UFC 300 in April, Pereira destroyed Jamahal Hill in the first round, seconds after taking a kick to the cup, and immediately pulled out a Khaby Lame taunt.
Then, stepping in on short notice, Pereira filled Conor McGregor’s main event shoes at UFC 303 with another second-round KO win over Prochazka. This one, in the post above, was more destructive than the first.
If it’s about money, it still doesn’t make sense to overlook Pereira. According to a recent article by Garrett Kerman of Sportscasting, Pereira might already be the promotion’s biggest star.
Kerman offers the following statistics.
- Alex Pereira has 5 of the top 11 highest-grossing PPV events in UFC history
- Pereira’s fights have averaged 15% more revenue than Conor McGregor
- Pereira has also earned more average gate revenue than Jon Jones (293%) and Ronda Rousey (351%)
Based on all these things, it’s almost inconceivable for O’Malley or anyone else to be tabbed as the UFC Fighter of the Year.
As it is, Pereira looks set to enter the Octagon again in December, but as I’ve pointed out here, he’s already done more than enough over the past year.
