Sean O’Malley, the reigning UFC bantamweight champion, has expressed interest in a potential boxing match against Ryan Garcia, a rising star in the boxing world. However, O’Malley has made it clear that he will only consider a crossover fight if it makes financial sense for both parties and helps elevate their respective profiles.
According to O’Malley, his bosses at the UFC have given him the green light to pursue a boxing match with Garcia, but only if it generates substantial revenue for the promotion. O’Malley believes that both fighters need to become bigger stars before they can command the kind of money that would make a crossover bout viable.
“They told me you can do a boxing fight, 100 percent, if it makes us enough money,” O’Malley said on his TimboSugarShow podcast. “So the option’s there, it just has to be able to make enough money. But Ryan being a f
freak like that, you need two A-sides to make a f
Floyd-Conor fight.”O’Malley drew parallels to the highly successful boxing match between Conor McGregor and Floyd Mayweather in 2017, which became one of the most lucrative pay-per-view events in history. The 29-year-old believes that both he and Garcia need to achieve similar levels of fame before a crossover fight can generate comparable revenue.
“I’m not there yet,” O’Malley said. “I’ve still got to become bigger. Two more f
sick performances and then we’re talking about being able to do whatever the f
* we want.”Garcia, for his part, appears to be equally interested in facing O’Malley in the boxing ring. The boxer took to social media to respond to O’Malley’s comments, expressing his willingness to take on the UFC champion in a boxing match.
It remains to be seen whether a crossover fight between O’Malley and Garcia will come to fruition. However, both fighters have expressed interest in the possibility, and it is certainly a matchup that would generate a lot of attention from fans of both sports.
