How Sean O’Malley keeps his feet on the ground as his career explodes

HELENA, Mont. — SEAN O’MALLEY IS standing at the living room window of his childhood home, taking in the panoramic view of his hometown.

It’s been a long time since he stood in this room. His family built this two-story house when he was 3, and he lived here for 16 years. The lot it rests on sits slightly elevated on a hill, offering a beautiful look at the 2,000-acre Lake Helena. It was his mother’s “dream house,” he says, the perfect haven for him and his three siblings to grow up in. A few years ago, his parents split up and sold it. The new owners, who have remained family acquaintances, have renovated it since and were kind enough to welcome him back for a visit.

“There used to be a huge wall right there,” O’Malley tells ESPN, pointing towards the kitchen. “This room used to be carpet. TV was there. Couch was there. Christmas tree went there. This is a trip, man. It still feels like our home. It looks really, really different, but it still feels like it’s ours.”

The final day O’Malley lived here consisted of him packing everything he owned into his Nissan Altima and driving to Glendale, Arizona. It was mid-summer 2014 and he was 19 years old. He had $2,000 to his name, saved up from his job at a local support center for people with disabilities. He went to Arizona to pursue better MMA training and begin his professional career in the sport. He had a few amateur fights in Montana, but had yet to turn pro.

Today, he returns to his hometown as a UFC champion and celebrity, worth millions. When he, his wife and their 3-year-old daughter flew into Montana earlier this May afternoon, they did so on a private jet.

“The last 10 years have been crazy,” O’Malley says. “It does feel like I’ve almost lived two different lives.”

On Saturday, the 29-year-old O’Malley (18-1) will headline perhaps the highest-profile event in the UFC’s 30-year history. According to CEO Dana White, Noche UFC inside Sphere in Las Vegas will be a “one-and-done” event, due to the sheer cost ($20 million, according to White) of putting it on. Individual seats for the UFC 306 card headlined by O’Malley’s bantamweight title defense against Merab Dvalishvili (17-4) have been listed for as much as $13,000 during fight week. It’s the kind of event every fighter — or, more accurately, prizefighter — dreams of. Even Conor McGregor, who has had a bit of a nasty public back-and-forth with O’Malley this year, wanted to headline this Sphere event, potentially against his old rival Nate Diaz. O’Malley admired McGregor until this year, and even said he’s tried to mimic parts of his career off McGregor’s. Ultimately, the honor and responsibility of headlining UFC 306 went to O’Malley.

Which is exactly what O’Malley wanted. He started his camp for this particular fight date before the UFC even offered it to him.

Sitting in this very living room where he stands today, O’Malley used to dream of fame and money, money and fame. Those dreams began as early as middle school, when he used to picture himself suiting up for an NFL team on Sundays. When he reached high school, he came to terms that he was too small to ever play in the NFL. Perhaps non-coincidentally, that’s also the exact same time in his life he started to kickbox.

“I think you have to want to be a star, and when I was in middle school, I did,” O’Malley says. “There are other guys who could be superstars, I just don’t think they want to be. Conor McGregor wanted to be a superstar. [UFC featherweight champion] Ilia Topuria wants to be a superstar. You have to have the skills and the highlights, all that — but you’ve got to want it, too.”

O’Malley has wanted it for the past 10 years, and is now reaping the rewards of his desire and discipline. Now, perhaps, comes the hardest part: maintaining enough of that desire and discipline to keep elevating his career. Fame can be a pitfall to success, especially in the fight game.

But as he quietly looks out at the landscape of his prior life — the lake, the backyard where his family once installed an in-ground trampoline, the sliding door that he used to sneak out of to buy snacks at Van’s Thriftway and “look for chicks” — you get the sense that if anyone could be immune to allowing this level of fame to derail him, it is O’Malley. Because as much as he acknowledges everything has already changed in his life to this point, he talks equally as much about how nothing has.

“I’ve been living this same life for a while,” O’Malley says. “It’s like, wake up, train, play Call of Duty, take a nap. It’s a beautiful life and it’s been the same thing for 10 years. When I had no money, I was doing that. Now, I have a lot of money, and I’m doing that. I’m doing what I’ve been doing and what needs to be done to continue to win fights.”

THE IDEA FOR O’Malley’s return to Helena in May came from his father, Dan. Or to be more precise, it came from the owner of a local gas station who proposed it to Dan.

The Town Pump on North Montana Avenue wanted to host a launch day for Happy Dad hard seltzers, which is one of O’Malley’s sponsors. When Dan made the call to his son, he was pretty certain it would be a long shot. That same month, O’Malley was already scheduled to attend “The Roast of Tom Brady” with White and Max Holloway in Los Angeles and film some promotional material in Miami for a body wash business venture he’d partnered on with Jake Paul.

“Sean was like, ‘Absolutely, I’d love to come back,'” Dan says. “And I said, ‘Who is this on the phone right now?’ I didn’t think he’d say that, but then he planned everything out. He was super excited and was like, ‘How weird is that going to be, Dad, that I’m flying back to my hometown on a private jet?’ And I think when he went up to our old house, if a camera crew wouldn’t have been there, you would have seen some tears. It means a lot to him to land here on an airplane and then see that house where he grew up.”

Of the hundreds of fans who show up to the Town Pump for the launch, at least half are kids from Capital High School, the same school O’Malley dropped out of his sophomore year. And of those, about half seem loosely familiar with the details of his career. Most are just inspired by the fact a kid from Helena could become such a celebrity. It’s a fairy tale that wouldn’t even seem plausible if it weren’t standing right in front of them in this gas station, wearing pink Versace sunglasses, cracking jokes about teachers who are still there to this day.

“One of them [teachers] told me to cut my hair, change my name and move out of the state,” O’Malley says, before pausing. “Which, f—, I pretty much did exactly that. The way he said it back then was a little mean, but it was actually good advice.”

The Happy Dad activation lasts until mid-afternoon, at which point O’Malley and his crew aggressively drive off in an SUV so no one can follow. Then they spend the rest of that day doing pretty much exactly what they would have done 10 years ago when no one knew who O’Malley was: goofing off. His coach, Tim Welch, who is also from Montana, purchases a wooden recorder and refuses to stop playing it for several hours. O’Malley and Welch bet another friend, nicknamed “Sonorman,” $100 each he can’t consume four McDonald’s quarter pounders with cheese, three large fries and two sets of nuggets. The day ends with “Sonorman” vomiting in the street.

This is what O’Malley and Welch have been doing for a decade, ever since O’Malley first pulled up that Nissan Altima in Arizona. Welch was still an active fighter at the time, and the two split the cost of a $650 apartment. Within three years, O’Malley burst onto the big-time MMA scene with a viral knockout on “Dana White’s Contender Series.” In the years since, it’s been one steady, progressive step to the top after another. He broke into the bantamweight top 10 in early 2022 and jumped the line for a title shot by upsetting former champion Petr Yan later that year. Even after he knocked out arguably the best bantamweight of all time in Aljamain Sterling with a perfect shot last August at UFC 292 in Boston, he’s remained almost impossibly grounded.

“On a private level, he’s the same goofy, crazy kid,” Dan says. “He and I have actually had a lot of conversations about that. ‘When I’m with you, I want to see Sean. I don’t want to see ‘Suga’ Sean, because I just want to be on the same level that we always used to be.’ And he is just a super humble kid. Humble, down-to-earth, great dad. We knew he was going to be a great dad. When he’s ‘Suga’ Sean, he has to be — for the fans. But he’s all about his family when he’s Sean.”

“Suga” is something of an alter ego for O’Malley. It’s all him, but played up for the purpose of marketing and social media. What he’s done well so far is not allow that social media version of himself to replace the original, as perhaps (one could make the case) his fellow star McGregor let happen. After the best year of his career in 2016, McGregor’s “Notorious” image started to take over some of his personal life, which then impacted his athletic life. He’s been arrested multiple times, including for throwing a dolly at a bus in 2018 before UFC 223. The 36-year-old former champ-champ has only fought four times in MMA in the past eight years, and has gone 1-3 in those appearances.

“Who brought the most excitement to fights? Conor McGregor, 100 percent,” O’Malley says. “He’s a dork, but it’s the truth. But no one thinks Conor is the greatest of all time. Greatest fighter of all time is Jon Jones, Khabib Nurmagomedov, Islam Makhachev is up there. I’m trying to be both. I’m three fights away from being considered one of the greatest of all time and one of the most exciting of all time. There’s a difference in what I’m trying to do.”

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THREE FIGHTS. O’MALLEY references that number, as does Welch. Three fights and they believe their current goal for O’Malley’s career should be accomplished. He will be one of the biggest — and richest — stars in the sport’s history, and one of its greatest champions.

Right now, that road starts with Dvalishvili, a 33-year-old force from Tbilisi, Georgia, who is on a 10-fight win streak and has just dominated three former champions in a row in José Aldo, Petr Yan and Henry Cejudo. The betting odds (ESPN BET has O’Malley as a slight favorite at -125) are tight given Dvalishvili’s relentless, wrestling-heavy style — something that O’Malley hasn’t truly had to deal with yet. O’Malley, however, doesn’t believe this to be a difficult matchup and he’s planning a viral-esque knockout, which, when coupled with the fact it’s taking place at Sphere, would shoot him into another level of stardom.

“I truly believe I’m gonna put his lights out very early,” O’Malley says. “I find people’s chin. That’s what I’m saying. I do. I’m going to find Merab’s chin. He has a huge head. I could try not to hit him and probably still accidentally hit him.”

Beyond that, O’Malley would welcome a date with undefeated Umar Nurmagomedov (18-0), the younger cousin of Dagestani legend Khabib Nurmagomedov. Even if O’Malley were to deliver a spectacular knockout over Dvalishvili, he would probably be a betting underdog again against Nurmagomedov. The combination of Nurmagomedov’s undefeated record and his family’s legacy would undeniably make it a massive fight for O’Malley and the UFC.

And if those two go in O’Malley’s favor, he’d probably look for something more transcendent, whether that’s a move up to featherweight to fight the likes of Topuria or BMF champion Holloway, or even a crossover into boxing against another superstar such as Ryan Garcia. It’s hard to say, specifically, what that third monster fight would be. The combat sports world changes rapidly. For McGregor, the case study for making money in the UFC, it was a 2017 boxing match against Floyd Mayweather, which reportedly made him nine figures when it was all said and done.

“He’s on his way [to being one of the biggest stars ever in the sport],” White said of O’Malley at the UFC 299 postfight news conference. “Yeah, he’s on his way. He’s the biggest star ever in bantamweight history. We can say that right now.”

McGregor’s boxing detour certainly hurt his MMA career over the past seven years. If O’Malley were to ever get his version of that, would it change his goals? He’s smart and self-aware enough to say he doesn’t know.

“There’s only one way to find out: Give me that check,” O’Malley says. “I don’t know. The only thing that stays the same is change itself. I’m constantly changing, my mindset is constantly changing. Right now, my mindset is to be the greatest fighter of all time. I go out there, win a fight, box, make $100 million? My mindset might not be that anymore. Right now, I’m focused on fighting.”