Exactly, the scorecards were released, 2 judges had Munoz winning the first round and 1 had Sean. Yet the fight ended as an eye poke and the UFC just treated it as an O'Malley win and gave him #1 ranked Petr Yan in his next fight.
UFC loves Sean because I guess he sells, so they've done their best to put him in a lot more favourable positions than other fighters.
In my opinion, before the Petr Yan fight Sean's best wins were against Thomas Almeida who was on a 3 fight losing skid. And Raulian Paiva, whose only real wins aren't even in the UFC anymore. Yet for some reason everyone thought O'Malley was the man
No disrespect, he obviously got the job done once he was afforded the opportunity. I just don't think he should have been given the shot. All marketing, no earning it in the cage.
I don't think many people thought O'Malley was the man. At least not the people who followed him as a fight fan. Maybe on the influencer side they did, but fight fans thought he was going to get his ass kicked by Yan. Regardless of how you scored the fight, he certainly didn't get his ass kicked.
I agree the Yan fight was a massive opportunity that he didn't really deserve, but once he beat him, what else are you going to do but give him a title shot? And maybe more importantly, who else are you going to give the title shot to? These other guys had massive opportunities, too, but lost.
Sandhagen was given essentially 3 #1 contender fights and he lost them all (Sterling, TJ, and Yan which was for the interim belt).
Chito probably would have been given a title shot but then lost to Sandhagen.
Merab would have been given a shot, but wouldn't fight Sterling.
Yan lost to Sterling, O'Malley, and Merab.
TJ and Cejudo got their shots.
So he might have been gifted an opportunity, but he took advantage of it when the other contenders didn't.