Sean O’Malley is facing a spell on the sidelines after his UFC 306 defeat to Merab Dvalishvili inside the Sphere in Las Vegas last weekend.

O’Malley, the now-former UFC bantamweight champion, was outpointed by Dvalishvili throughout five rounds in what was one of the most spectacular events ever held by the organisation inside the state of the art Sphere in Sin City — but if some were expecting O’Malley to get his bid to regain the 135-pound title in short order, they may have to wait a little longer than anticipated.

“I probably won’t fight for probably nine months, 10 months, maybe a year,” O’Malley noted on his YouTube channel, via MMA Fighting.

“It’s going to be a while. People are going to have to watch the UFC without The Suga Show for a little bit, but then maybe they’ll realise, ‘F*ck, we had it, it was fun.’

“No one’s next. I’ve got to get healthy and that’s it. I’m going to actually heal up from injuries, and take my time to come back.”

In a separate podcast interview, O’Malley elaborated on the reasoning behind his protracted absence from the cage.

“I have surgery on October 3. I tore my labrum like 10 weeks ago,” he explained. “You have a labrum in both your shoulders and in your hips. I tore my left labrum in my hip so I’ve got to get surgery. That’s the only reason I’m going to be out for so long.

“The surgery should only take two months to come back from and then it will take a couple of months of recovery. So a year’s a long time. It could be six to eight months but I’m kind of just going with the flow. You never know. The UFC won’t be the same without me.”

But having said all of that, O’Malley also noted that the hip injury he is working through didn’t impact him against Dvalishvili and that he was defeated by the Georgian fair and square.

“Great fight week, best weight cut, felt good, no excuses,” O’Malley said. “My mom, too, she says, ‘You just weren’t the same, what was wrong?’ Nothing. I jut got beat. There was nothing. Everyone keeps asking me, ‘Something seemed off, something different, you were flat-footed,’ I was like, there was nothing. Zero excuses. Nothing. Had a good fight camp, good weight cut.”