Cody Garbrandt calls for fight with Sean O’Malley: ‘I really want to whoop his ass’

Cody Garbrandt has no plans to slow down any time soon, regardless of his current struggles, and has his sights set on one of the promotion’s emerging stars.

The former UFC bantamweight champion is 1-5 over his last six fights, which includes getting viciously finished in four of those defeats. Most recently, Garbrandt made the drop to the flyweight division at UFC 269 and was knocked out in just over three minutes.

On a recent episode of his podcast Rollin With the Homies, “No Love” reacted to his recent loss and also hopes to return to 135 to stand across the octagon from one of the division’s newly ranked competitors.

“Sean O’Malley — I really want to whoop his ass,” Garbrandt said. “That’s a fight that’s looming, hopefully that’s possibly my next one. I want that fight so I’d stay at 35 [for that one]. He might fight me now that I’m not in the rankings at 35 and he’s ranked. That’d be a good fight.”

In his most recent appearance, O’Malley stopped Garbrandt’s Team Alpha Male teammate Raulian Paiva via first-round TKO at UFC 269. It was the third straight stoppage victory for “Sugar,” who has bounced back nicely from his first pro loss to Marlon Vera at UFC 252.

“You’ve got to respect his skills,” Garbrandt stated. “He leveled up a bit for the Raulian fight. [He] caught him early on, but we knew that the only way he was going to win was catching him early on and he did that. He did his job. Hats off to him.

“He’s in the rankings now. The rankings are the rankings but he’s ranked now, so I’d have to go back up to 35 to whoop his ass. We’ll decide. We’ll figure it out.”

Garbrandt did state that he felt great during his move to 125 and he could comfortably compete at either weight class. In the end, the 30-year-old isn’t going to let anybody but himself dictate when and how his career will come to a close, but it’s not happening anytime soon.

For now, Garbrandt will enjoy time with those close to him heading into 2022 before booking his next octagon appearance.

“I’ll get back in the gym, get back to training, reach out to Ali [Abdelaziz] to see when the timeframe is for the next fight,” Garbrandt said. “Right now, the plan is to have a good [holiday season] and the rest will fall into place.”