Ahead of his fight against Michael Morales at UFC 322 this Saturday, Sean Brady sat down with Fighters Only’s Paul Browne to discuss his patient approach to the title picture and why he believes he’s the toughest test Morales has faced to date.
Sean Brady isn’t letting anything blur his focus ahead of UFC 322 this weekend.
Currently ranked No. 2 at 170 pounds, Brady (18–1 MMA, 8–1 UFC) could earn a shot at the winner of the UFC welterweight title fight if he can defeat Michael Morales (18–0 MMA, 6–0 UFC) in emphatic fashion on Saturday night.
After rebounding impressively from his first career loss to Belal Muhammad two years ago, Brady appeared to be the most likely contender to challenge for Jack Della Maddalena’s title, until longtime lightweight champion Islam Makhachev (27–1 MMA, 16–1 UFC) jumped the line. As a result, Brady now faces a tough test in eighth-ranked Morales instead.
“I’m not worried, because I think that winning solves everything, and eventually I'm going to have to get my shot at the title,” Brady says assuredly. “Like, yeah, I might have to fight again after this one, and I'm completely fine with that. Eventually I'll get to the title shot, it doesn't have to be next fight. I'm not in a rush to get there, you know?
“I feel like I've tried to rush things in the past, and that's when I fought Belal, and it didn't go my way, so now I just think whatever is on my path is on my path. And right now it's Michael Morales, and then whatever's after that will come, and I'll deal with it then.”
Having beaten former welterweight champion Leon Edwards in devastating fashion in March, Brady could be forgiven for feeling a bit aggrieved at not being rewarded with a title shot this time around. While he’ll be fighting down the rankings at Madison Square Garden on Saturday, eighth-ranked Morales is far from an opponent to take lightly. The unbeaten Ecuadorian made light work of Gilbert Burns in his last outing in May, and Brady is fully aware of the challenge that awaits him this weekend.
“He did finish Gilbert very quickly, but I think Gilbert kind of gave up on himself more than Michael finished him,” Brady says of Morales’s last performance. “Michael is definitely big, he's strong, he hits hard, but he's not like ‘one punching’ a lot of these guys, you know? He's TKO-ing them on the ground. I think he just kind of overwhelms them, and I don't think he's fought like a true, true grappler who's going to push him, like Gilbert was on his way to doing that. Gilbert had good moments in that fight and showed a lot of good things, but I just think that he hasn't been tested the way I'm going to test him.”
