Sean O’Malley feels better than ever heading into his rematch with Merab Dvalishvili.
Next Saturday, O’Malley challenges Dvalishvili for the bantamweight title he lost to “The Machine” back at UFC 306. Ahead of the bout, O’Malley has pulled out all the stops, training with the likes of Israel Adesanya and Demetrious Johnson as he prepares for his shot at redemption, but perhaps the biggest change O’Malley made in advance of UFC 316 is cleansing his life of distractions; namely, social media and marijuana.
Speaking with Jim Rome on Wednesday, O’Malley revealed just how much better he feels after doing a full social media detox for 2025.
“There are not a whole lot of things you can probably say are ‘life-changing’ but I would say me getting off of my social media—they’re still running, we’re still making content, I still have a team doing that stuff—but for me to actually not get on my phone, get on Instagram, get on Snapchat, get on Twitter, engage with the virtual reality every single day, hours a day, has completely changed my life in a positive way,” O’Malley said. “I don’t have any desire to get back on.
“I didn’t do this so I can beat Merab. I didn’t get off social media and stop doing this, stop doing that, so I can beat Merab. I did for my own peace of mind. I never really had anxiety. Everyone has a low level of anxiety. But getting off social media, not opening up my phone all the time, that pretty much eliminated it. I feel like it was definitely worth doing.”
It’s not just social media, though. O’Malley also put down the pot this year. For a fighter who became well known in part due to his open support of weed—and even early on in his UFC career smoked with Snoop Dogg—that’s a big shift. And while O’Malley says he’s not getting off the electric lettuce forever, like he is with social media, he does think this detox has been good for him.
“I don’t think I’ve even smoked this year. I might have,” O’Malley said. “That was another thing. I’m not done smoking weed forever. I definitely enjoy it, but it was kind of just giving me this anxiety I didn’t really want. I don’t know if it was a mixture between the social media and then smoking, it was just something in me was saying, ‘Hey, let’s take a [break]. We’re stopping social media, we’re stopping this, we’re stopping that, let’s take a little break from it.’ And that also feels really good.”
Whether or not these changes will make the difference in a rematch with Dvalishvili, only time will tell. There’s also the matter of O’Malley entering their first fight with a hip injury he’s since had surgically repaired, which may also play a role. Whatever does it, though, O’Malley is convinced he leaves Newark as the bantamweight champion.
“I know I can beat Merab,” O’Malley said. “He’s open to getting knocked out. I’m very confident that I can put his lights out. I’m also confident I can beat him in a five-round fight. There’s definitely a possibility of me putting his lights out, but I’m ready to go for 25 minutes. I’m ready to have to dig deep.”
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