Sean O'Malley: 'I'm Making Around $4500 A Month' On Twitch During USADA Suspension

Sean O’Malley is one of the brightest young stars on the Ultimate Fighting Championship roster after being awarded a contract for his performances on Dana White's Tuesday Night Contender Series. He also has an alternative revenue stream, as he waits for his next fight.

“Suga” was scheduled to face Jose Quinonez at UFC 229 last month which was headlined by Conor McGregor and Khabib Nurmagomdeov and would have been the biggest fight of his career so far. However, he was pulled from the card after testing positive for ostarine, a substance banned by the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA).

Before being flagged by USADA, the exciting 24-year-old was recovering from a hip injury he suffered during an impressive win over against Andre Soukhamthath at UFC 222 back in March. O’Malley was a guest on the recent episode of “The MMA Hour” and told host Luke Thomas that while he’s been unable to compete inside the Octagon, he’s been busy focusing on another hobby of his -- video games.

“Back-to-back surgeries and in the middle of a suspension for something I didn’t do,” O’Malley said. “I’ve been super positive. I think a big thing right now is I’m super into gaming and I think that’s helped me a lot. I see people are always like, ‘Do you even train?’ and stuff like that, but honestly I haven’t really been able to train the last month because of this hip issue. I just got off crutches last week.”

In June this year, O’Malley joined the gaming organization OpTic Gaming and since his lay off he’s been streaming himself for up to eight hours a day through Twitch playing the hugely popular free-to-play battle royale game called Fortnite.

“So I’ve just been playing Fortnite, building my Twitch channel, keeping busy that way. I use my Instagram as a business, so I feel like I’ve been keeping busy in the industry. I’ve been doing a lot of kinda fashion pictures and talking to some fashion, so I’d like to dip my shoes in the fashion industry. I like to be in the entertainment business, so I’m excited to come back, and at the end of the day fighting is what I truly love to do and that’s what I really love doing, so I’m excited to be able to get back in the gym and start training.”

“Right now I’m making around $4,500 a month through gaming,” O’Malley said. “I just do it because I love it. I’ve been playing video games since I was a little kid, and I’ve had a couple people say, ‘Why don’t you stream? Why don’t you stream?’ I was like, ‘No one wants to watch me play.’ And I’ve been streaming for like nine months now and there’s some loyal fans in there.

“I only get 50, 60 viewers at a time, so if fans have questions, they come in there, and there’s some kids there that literally every time I go live, they get a notification on their phone and they’re in there talking, saying, ‘Hey, what’s up?’ I have a good relationship with my subscribers. They come in there, subscribe, and I’m in the UFC video game now so I was playing that a couple times. I’ve seen some people on Twitter like, ‘Why would we pay to play with you?’ It’s not like that. It’s something I do — it’s not just fun, it’s work too. I put a lot of hours into that to try to build that channel, so it’s work really at the end of the day.”