LAS VEGAS – According to Dana White, there is no way he or the UFC could have known about Sean O’Malley’s injury before UFC 306.
O’Malley (18-2 MMA, 10-2 UFC) lost his bantamweight title to Merab Dvalishvili (18-4 MMA, 11-2 UFC) by unanimous decision in Saturday’s Noche UFC main event at Sphere. O’Malley was taken down six times and was in control for more than 10 minutes of the bout.
O’Malley later revealed that he had torn his left labrum in his hip 10 weeks before the fight and was scheduled to undergo surgery on October 3. White was asked how the UFC can prevent fighters from competing with injuries in the future.
“If these guys come in and they have something that we don’t know about, how would the doctors check for a torn labrum? You know what I mean? There’s no way,” White told reporters, including MMA Junkie, after Dana White’s Contender Series 72 at the UFC Apex.
White points out that O’Malley looked flat and says many others noticed as well.
“Literally everybody reached out to me that night and said Sean O’Malley didn’t look like himself,” White said. “He didn’t look explosive, he didn’t look, you know, all the same things that we all said that night. Not to take anything away from Merab, but I mean everybody felt that way.”
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For more information on the card, visit MMA Junkie’s UFC 306 event hub.
This article originally appeared on MMA Junkie: Dana White: UFC Never Could Have Known About Sean O’Malley’s Hip Injury Before UFC 306
