Sean O’Malley unsurprisingly made the most money of his fighting career in his last fight. ‘Suga’, of course, lost his bantamweight title to Merab Dvalishvili at UFC 306 at the iconic Sphere just last month. And speaking to ‘JOIN THE LOBBY’ YouTube channel about his paychecks, the former champ admitted “Yeah for sure it was this last one, you know.” And losing the title had not just hurt his ego hype, but also his pocket as he might not get PPV points anymore.

“Now that I’m not the champ so I won’t make nearly as much money because when you start making real money is when you’re the champ. And not even not just fighting for the belt but defending the belt,” O’Malley explained.

O’Malley of course, is often criticized for not really being a PPV seller despite the UFC ‘pushing’ him. His UFC 292 headlined event came under scrutiny as Henry Cejudo alleged only 300k PPV buys while Suga himself claimed it to be in the range of 570k. But the Montana native thinks his lagging PPV sales are down to illegal streams cannibalizing the viewership since many fans are unwilling to pay $79.99 for a PPV when they can watch it online.

“The pay-per-view money is not like it used to be though because 50% of people are streaming it I mean I made that number at 50% might be more could be less,” he added.

While O’Malley did not go into any detail about his purses, reports suggest that he made $3.2 million for UFC 306, and only marginally less for his UFC 299 clash against Marlon ‘Chito’ Vera at $2.27 million, which was his first title defense. And indeed, his UFC 292 clash against Aljamain Sterling, where he was not the champ coming in, made him just $500,000, probably because the event didn’t sell enough PPVs for the revenue sharing clause to kick in. But ‘Suga’ had a very good explanation for that, which didn’t have anything to do with him.

Sean O’Malley admits he cannot sell PPVs with his own star power

‘Suga’ revealed that his UFC 299 clash against Marlon ‘Chito’ Vera did really good PPV numbers, but not really because of him. He credited the commercial performance to just how good of a card it was. After all, Dustin Poirier took on Benoit Saint-Denis in an electric matchup in the co-main event and Michael ‘Venom’ Page made his debut on the same card. Similarly ‘Suga’ felt that his UFC 292 card not doing as well, was again, due to the card not having many exciting fights.

“So my fight versus ‘Chito’ did really really well. The fight versus Aljo, I don’t know what the pay-per-views were, I can’t imagine it was too good to be honest because like the card kind of was dust… The pay-per-view payment takes 4 months to confirm like all the numbers. So I have no idea how this one did… I’m assuming it is the sphere you know…Obviously, I’m hoping it was bigger than the last one but yeah, I have no idea,” O’Malley said.

Of course, some will point out that the PPV cards are only as big as the headliners. And while illegal streaming links certainly have eaten into the PPV sales, big stars like Israel Adesanya and Alex Periera have no problem selling PPVs. O’Malley admitting to having trouble selling PPVs does lend some credence to his critics who argue he isn’t just that big of a star and that his stardom is not organic. What do you think about O’Malley’s paycheck-related revelations?