One thing that O’Malley has been dealing with is a lot of online hate and the fighter admits that it has been hard on him.
“It was hard,” O’Malley said on MMA Tonight (via Fernanda Prates of MMA Junkie). “I remember the first couple of nights, I would just kind of tear up thinking, like, damn – because a lot of people, you look at Instagram, social media, you see people calling you (expletive) whatever. And you’re not supposed to look at the comments. I’m pretty good about not looking at the comments, and there was more positive than there was negative, but there can be 50 positives and one negative, you kind of latch on to that negative comment. So that kind of sucked, but then I remembered, the people that are commenting on that, they’re hurting on the inside. They’re depressed, they’re sad. People that do that are already kind of going through their own (expletive). So it made sense that people are like that.”
O’Malley is set to return to action at UFC 239, facing Marlon Vera in a bantamweight division encounter.
The fighter is also quick to admit that it is stressful now dealing with USADA and drug testing.
“People, everyone thinks it’s steroids – people are saying I got caught doing steroids,” O’Malley said. “And what ostarine is a SARM (selective androgen receptor modulator, a PED that falls under ‘other anabolic agents’), it’s not a steroid. What (ex-champ T.J. Dillashaw) got caught for, that’s a (expletive) cheat. You can’t fake that. But that’s what people think I got in trouble for, the same kind of stuff. And no, that’s not even – mine was, I didn’t take anything. So it sucks getting tested by USADA now because it’s (expletive) stressful. Every time I see them at the gym I’m like, ‘God, I didn’t take anything last time when I failed the test, so what is it going to be this time?’”
UFC 239 takes place on Saturday, July 6 from the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada with Jon Jones and Thiago Santos headlining. Fightful is providing live coverage of the event, with a post-show podcast to follow.
