Sean O’Malley is one of the most popular UFC fighters currently under contract with the promotion and now he’s just been promoted to brown belt in BJJ too. His promotion has come from fellow MMA veteran Augusto ‘Tanquinho’ Mendes and Tim Welch, who has been training under for quite some time at TW Jiu-Jitsu and MMA / Soul Fighters Peoria. The news comes almost exactly two years to the day since when O’Malley received his purple belt from those very same two coaches.
Despite being far more well-known for his striking abilities, Sean O’Malley is certainly a legitimate brown belt and has been hungry to improve his grappling even further for quite some time. Just last year, he was seen competing at a Grappling Industries tournament alongside one of the best leglockers around right now, Danaher Death Squad member Robert Degle. While this was no doubt invaluable experience for him to help round out his game and improve as an MMA fighter overall, someone with Degle’s unique style isn’t exactly representative of your average UFC fighter.
He’s also been linked to Submission Underground, as the event regularly features MMA fighters competing under grappling rulesets and would likely prove to be a more fitting test of his skills against the types of styles he’s more likely to come up against. To date, O’Malley has only ever secured one submission win all the way back in his third professional fight in 2015 and no matter how much he improves on the ground, it’s unlikely he ever veers to far away from the explosive and unorthodox striking that catapulted him to fame while giving him nine knockout wins and three UFC ‘performance of the night’ bonuses.
