Sean Brady says his November welterweight fight with Michael Morales at UFC 322 nearly didn’t happen, the Philadelphia fighter told an interviewer in comments relayed by AOL. Brady lost the fight by first-round TKO, the second defeat of his career.
Per AOL, Brady made the claim while looking back at what went wrong in a fight where he was finished at 3:27 of the opening round at Madison Square Garden on the Della Maddalena vs. Makhachev card. The outlet didn’t say which side considered pulling out, or the reason Brady gave — only that there were “shocking claims” tied to the build-up.
Brady hasn’t framed the situation as an excuse, according to the AOL report, and he’s already back in the win column. He bounced back on May 9 at UFC 328, beating Joaquin Buckley by unanimous decision over five rounds on the Chimaev vs. Strickland card. It was his first fight since the Morales loss.
The numbers still read like a top contender’s. The 33-year-old is 19-2 with six submissions, a 68.21% significant-strike accuracy and 53.45% takedown accuracy, per ESPN. Before the Morales setback, Brady had reeled off wins over Leon Edwards (submission, March 2025), Gilbert Burns (unanimous decision, September 2024) and Kelvin Gastelum (submission, December 2023) — the run that earned him the title eliminator against Morales in the first place.
The Morales loss reshuffled the welterweight contender picture heading into the end of 2025. Morales jumped the queue with the finish; Brady had to rebuild. The Buckley win in May puts him back near the top of a division currently held by champion Jack Della Maddalena, though the UFC hasn’t announced his next assignment.
Brady hasn’t given a return date and the UFC hasn’t confirmed a next booking. His comments about the near-cancellation of the Morales fight, as relayed by AOL, leave open the question of what exactly threatened the bout. Neither the UFC nor Morales’s camp has addressed it publicly.
