Sean O’Malley: UFC ‘wasn’t too mad’ when I pulled out joint on FOX broadcast

Sean O’Malley paid homage to Nate Diaz by posing with a joint when he appeared on the UFC on Fox 29 broadcast on Saturday night.

The highly touted bantamweight prospect hatched a plan to produce the joint as soon as a member of the UFC’s PR team informed him and Mackenzie Dern that they would be featuring on the broadcast.

“Where they sat us was right in the UFC section, so I figured they would [put me on camera],” O’Malley told Ariel Helwani on the latest episode of The MMA Hour.

“Eventually they come up to us and said, ‘Hey, we’re going to shoot you guys here in a little bit, we’ll let you know’. I was like, ‘this is perfect timing.’”

Knowing what he was about to do, O’Malley smiled at the member of the PR staff who informed him that he would appear on the broadcast. The staff member only understood the meaning of the smirk after O’Malley posed with the joint.

“I kept smiling at [UFC official] Heidi [Dean] who had just told us that we’re going to get on camera because I knew that she wasn’t going to be happy with me, but she wasn’t too mad. She was the one who said, ‘Okay, you guys are going to be on camera in 3,2,1,’ and I kept smiling at her but she didn’t know why, but I think she did then,” he explained.

Although O’Malley’s MMA Lab teammate Mackenzie Dern appeared to be surprised by his grand gesture, he revealed that he gave the jiu-jitsu ace a brief warning before he presented to the joint to those watching around the world.

“I told her before; I warned her. Well, I told her right before and she said, ‘Okay’. Mackenzie is cool. She’s been training at The MMA Lab for three years, so I’ve known her for a while.”