MiddleEasy

Sean O'Malley reveals Daniel Cormier reached out to him after not mentioning his name as a potential next opponent for Petr Yan during the post-fight interview: “DC messaged me on Instagram. He said, ‘Hey, I do think that you should fight for the title.’ I messaged him back and said, ‘Hey bro, I don't take anything personal.’ Even if Daniel Cormier thought Song was deserving, I wouldn't care. We ended up talking last night. He said he thinks I'm deserving, he thinks I should be next and all that. It was good. It was cordial. I definitely have felt before that DC had a little bias against me. Coming up, it felt like he kind of wanted to see me lose a little bit. At one point I felt like that. Now I don't feel like that. At the end of the day, commentating is a hard job. You're not always gonna say the right thing.”

Tim Welch doesn't hold back with his praise for Petr Yan: “Petr Yan, in my opinion, is one of the scariest MMA fighters there's ever been. He'll beat your ass in the clinch. He's good on top. He's a master of boxing in the open, and he's just a little terminator. He's not scared of anyone. When you go into a fight with Petr Yan, you're gonna come out hurt for sure. For him to be able to do that for five rounds, that was one of the sickest things I've ever seen. It was just an absolute masterpiece by Petr Yan.”

Dominick Reyes believes DC relies too heavily on his status as a double champ and doesn't put in the necessary work as a commentator: “People think because he's double champ, all these things, that he automatically knows everything about everything. Being a fighter doesn't automatically make you an expert in striking. Doesn't automatically make you an expert in movement. No, you've got to continue to grow and learn and get better. Not just everybody already give you a pass that you know everything about everything. That's not how the world works, man."

Tim Welch questions why Petr Yan didn't call for Sean O'Malley after his win: “I was more surprised that Petr Yan wasn't calling for the Suga rematch more. If there were pay-per-view points involved, I'm sure he would've been calling for it a lot more. But now that there's not... he remembers how Suga made him feel in that cage. It was hard for him to track Suga down. That was the first time Petr shot that many times in a fight ever in his career, I'm pretty sure. I think Petr Yan remembers how that felt. Being locked in the cage with Petr Yan for five rounds is a scary thing, but I do think Suga poses a lot of problems for him. I was expecting him to be like, ‘I want that back. I want to beat that pink little poodle,’ or whatever he called him. But he wasn't."