Aiemann Zahabi insists his unorthodox striking style will be more effective than Sean O’Malley‘s.
Zahabi (14-2 MMA, 8-2 UFC) draws former bantamweight champion O’Malley (19-3 MMA, 11-3 UFC) at UFC Freedom 250 on June 14 from the White House in Washington, D.C. (Paramount+).
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O’Malley sees Zahabi’s claim that he’s a better striker as misdirection, but the streaking Canadian contender explains what he meant.
“There are different ways of looking at striking,” Zahabi told MMA Junkie. “I feel the way he looks at it is you either have to be a very clean, traditional striker, and I don’t think that’s what it takes to win fights. My striking is not traditional in the sense that I don’t look like a karate fighter. I don’t look like a kickboxer, and I don’t really look like a boxer, and I don’t look like a muay Thai fighter. I have an amalgamation of them all.
“My style is more of a Frankenstein style. I take what I like from muay Thai, I take what I like from boxing, I take what I like from taekwondo, karate, and I put it together and make it battle effective. It doesn’t have to look pretty, and it doesn’t have to fit in the mold for me, and I feel like that is where my advantage is. I’ve sparred a million guys like him, but he hasn’t sparred a million guys like me because nobody really has the same concoction of me in striking.”
Zahabi is coming off a split decision win over Marlon Vera this past October, a fight where he broke his forearm. O’Malley also holds a recent win over “Chito,” and Zahabi compared their two performances and why O’Malley put on a shutout performance.
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“I feel like he might gas out in this fight,” Zahabi said of O’Malley. “I feel like he’s underestimating the pressure that I’m going to be bringing and my ability to cut off the cage. I watched his fight with ‘Chito.’ He didn’t get ‘Chito’ up on the fence. I feel like the ‘Chito’ he fought the second time around was different than the ‘Chito’ I fought.
“The ‘Chito’ I fought was willing to escape and move around, move his feet, whereas the ‘Chito’ he fought stood his ground, so O’Malley was able to come in dynamically, exit dynamically and ‘Chito’ didn’t really move very much. But when I came in on ‘Chito,’ ‘Chito’ backed up. So, I couldn’t get off the same strikes O’Malley was getting.”
This article originally appeared on MMA Junkie: UFC White House: Aiemann Zahabi unfazed by Sean O’Malley’s striking
