Aljamain
Sterling has his eyes on surging contender Diego Lopes
if a potential clash against Movsar
Evloev falls through.
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Sterling was originally scheduled to fight Evloev at UFC 307
on Oct. 5 at the Delta Center in Salt Lake City, Utah. However,
“Funkmaster” was forced out due to an injury suffered in training
camp. Sterling would prefer rebooking his matchup with Evloev, who
will reportedly not remain on the UFC 307 card, at a later
date.
If Evloev doesn’t wait for him, Sterling wants to face Lopes. The
former bantamweight champ has commended Lopes’ quick rise to
stardom within the span of a year. While Sterling perceived Lopes
as a nice, polite guy while training together in the past, he can
now sense the tension that’s common for two potential opponents
when they now come across each other.
Sterling had always eyed Brian
Ortega as the matchup that could catapult him into title
contention. However, Lopes beat Ortega via unanimous decision at
UFC
306 on Sept. 14 to take a massive leap toward contention at
featherweight. Sterling believes now Lopes is the matchup where the
risk is worth the reward.
“Maybe Diego Lopes,” Sterling recently told The Schmo. “Maybe that will be a
battle for the [No.] 3 [ranking]… I think Diego rising to his
stardom, his rise in the sport in the UFC has been huge, is nothing
short of inspiring, to be honest. I’m happy for the guy. I got to
train with him once — very nice dude, very polite. I can kind of
feel the tension shift a little bit now whenever I see him. It
seems like there’s a little bit more tension there…
“If we’re talking the next best fight, if Movsar declines, I just
don’t know who else would he fight? But if you give me the option,
I always wanted Brian Ortega so I could get the closest spot to the
top, and now that next closest guy is Diego Lopes. That’s all it
is. It has nothing to do with what this guy did or that, it’s the
name value, what it gets me, risk vs. reward. And if I’m going to
risk it for the biscuit, that’s the guy I’d risk it for.”
After losing his bantamweight title to Sean O’Malley via knockout
last year, Sterling moved up to 145 pounds, earning a dominant
unanimous decision win over Calvin
Kattar in his divisional debut at UFC 300 this past April.
Meanwhile, Lopes made his UFC debut on short notice against Evloev
at UFC 288 last year, dropping a unanimous decision. The Brazilian
has since racked up five consecutive wins, three of them via
first-round finishes.