Marlon Vera sends message to Sean O’Malley’s corner after UFC 252

Marlon Vera has a message for Sean O’Malley’s corner after the pair collided in the UFC 252 co-main event on Saturday night.

Vera entered his fight with O’Malley as a significant betting underdog, but ultimately sprung the upset, scoring an impressive TKO win in the bout’s first round.

Speaking at the UFC 252 post-fight press conference, Vera revealed that O’Malley’s cornermen were somewhat hostile to him in the moments immediately surrounding the fight, talking some trash ahead of time, and protesting referee Herb Dean’s stoppage after the fact.

After his win over O’Malley, he sent a message to his vanquished foe’s team.

“The guy was snoring,” Vera said (via MMA Fighting). “When I landed the second elbow, he was making noises, he was out. And then when Herb Dean got in the middle, you could see [O’Malley’s] head bounce back. I see his corner saying, ‘No, that was too early.’ We make eye contact and I was like, ‘You know that sh*t wasn’t early,’ and the guy was pretty quiet all of a sudden.

“That guy was talking sh*t while we were getting ready to walk to the cage. He was yelling, ‘He’s slow.’ It’s like, dude, it’s a fu**ing fight, if you want to try to get in my head, you’ve got to try harder than that. So I was just like, the only way to make you pay is fu**ing your kid up.”

In his last fight, Marlon Vera lost an extremely controversial decision to Song Yadong. After that bitter loss, he says he had extra motivation to train and perform against Sean O’Malley.

“I believe I’m a solid top-10,” Vera said. “I’ve been making damage in the division. What happened in the last fight got me pretty upset, got me pretty angry, and actually made me do what I did tonight. I wasn’t happy. I was pushing myself a little harder. I was being hard on me. I don’t give myself vacation, I don’t give myself cheat days. I was like, it’s time to dig deep and that’s when I find myself even better. I came to this fight with a mission. I cannot let this happen again in my life.

“That was terrible. They take half of my check, they cut a pretty sweet winning streak, which—I’m at seven right now, I don’t care what they say, I’m on [a seven-fight] winning streak.”

What do you think is next for Marlon Vera after his UFC 252 win over Sean O’Malley?