Aljamain Sterling will take on Sean O’Malley on August 19 in Boston. It will be the biggest fight of Sterling’s career and O’Malley’s first title shot, which has seemed inevitable since he burst in with an impressive knockout win at Dana White’s Contender Series in 2017.
Given the differences in the styles of the two fighters and their ability to end fights, a fight can end in a variety of ways. Here you will find a detailed comparison for each of the parameters.
Note that the betting company Mostbet India is already accepting bets on this fight. Sterling is the favorite with odds of 1.34 to win. You can bet on your opponent with a coefficient of 3.33.
Rack
Sean O’Malley’s best chance, possibly the only one, of beating Sterling is on his feet. Sterling’s striking technique has improved greatly in recent years. He has a good jab and great low shots. For example, body punches were a big part of his victory over Cejudo at UFC 288. However, the champ can still be pretty raw on the stand. He even received criticism from his corner for throwing wild, dribble punches against Cejudo.
O’Malley is the opposite. While he may not be the best clean boxer in bantamweight (that title could also be held by Petr Yan or Rob Font), he is arguably the best striker in the division overall as he backs up his boxing with a versatile attacking style of muay thai. . His last fight, a split decision victory over Jan, was a great example of his versatility. He hit the Russian with hands, knees, elbows and headbutts.
O’Malley is not only versatile. He is also active and precise – much more so than Sterling. It hits 7.43 times per minute with an accuracy of 60 percent. Sterling, on the other hand, lands less than five meaningful bpm at 52 percent accuracy.
This statistic helps break down O’Malley and Sterling’s percussive work, but is not necessary. We just need to look at their knockout rates. O’Malley has completed 10 of his 16 wins by knockout or TKO. Sterling has only defeated three opponents with punches in 26 fights, with those stoppages occurring on the ground. This is more an indication that the champion is better at something than that he is bad on the stand, but there is no alternative here: in the fight with O’Malley, he is inferior on his feet. Strongly.
Advantage: O’Malley
Struggle
Just as O’Malley has a clear advantage on the stand, Sterling is clearly a much better fighter. Champion has been fighting since 2004 when he was in high school. His wrestling serves him well in the octagon.
His fold accuracy percentage is quite low – 24 percent, which is worse than O’Malley’s – but he is persistent enough that it often doesn’t matter. In his victory over Cejudo, for example, he attempted 15 resets to throw four, which helped convince the judges that he deserved to win.
Just because Sterling is a good fighter isn’t the only thing. Dumps have always been a vulnerability for O’Malley. For all his prowess on his feet, he usually offers little resistance when his opponents can get to his hips. For example, Petr Yan, took O’Malley to the ground six times in his three-round fight last year – and the Russian isn’t even a wrestler by trade.
O’Malley’s reset defense isn’t terrible, but it’s not great either, and against a fighter who’s as technical, strong, and persistent as Sterling, that’s something to worry about.
Advantage: Sterling
Pain
One of the things that makes Sterling such an effective fighter is that he backs up his fight with amazing ground work. If he can checkmate his opponents – and he usually can – he can not only control them, but also threaten them with a variety of choke holds.
The best example of this happened in 2020, when he took dangerous opponent Corey Sandhagen to the mat and subdued him with a choke. It was the eighth win by submission in his fighting career, while O’Malley had only won fights by submission twice – strangely, his first and third fights.
The statistics reflect the difference in their skill levels and their approaches to grappling. Sterling tries 0.8 choke holds in 15 minutes in the octagon; O’Malley is only 0.5.
This doesn’t mean that O’Malley can’t beat Sterling by submission, or that it will be easy for him to choke him or arm him or anything like that. But the champion is obviously ahead of him in this regard.
Advantage: Sterling
As you can see, according to preliminary estimates, Sterling also came out as our favorite.
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