It was pretty clear how Aljamain
Sterling felt about winning the bantamweight title via
disqualification moments after his UFC 259
bout with Petr Yan
reached its unexpected conclusion.
When the final ruling was announced, Sterling quickly removed the
belt from his waist and threw it in the Octagon before falling to
his knees in disappointment. Though “The Funkmaster” wanted to
continue, a cageside doctor determined otherwise after Yan landed a
devastating illegal knee 4:29 into Round 4.
“Everything I worked for to this point and to have the fight go
like that… I thought the fight was very close, I thought I was down
two rounds. That’s not the way I wanted to win,” Sterling said.
“That’s not the way I envisioned this. I just took the belt
off.
“I was trying to continue even being like that, I was in a bad
shape and it would just have been ego taking over and just to get
further punishment. The ref told me I was down. I don’t know. I
understand that there is some heat, some bad blood a little bit,
but it’s all rivalry …”
The 135-pound title clash was competitive heading into the
championship frames, but it appeared that Yan had an opportunity to
pull away. Through three rounds, judges Derek Cleary and Sal
D’Amato had it 29-28 for the Russian, while Ron McCarthy saw it
29-28 in favor of Sterling.
That only added to Sterling’s disappointment.
“I wanted to continue. The fight was fast paced, it was a lot of
action, I know the fans were enjoying that,” he said. “This was
potentially going to be one of the fights of the year or one of the
greatest bantamweight fights in history for the title. The action
was nonstop until that point.”
On the bright side, it appears the UFC will book a rematch with
Sterling and Yan as soon as it is possible to do so.
“Sorry that the fight went like this,” Sterling said. “I hope we
get to run it back, do it again and give you the fight you guys
deserve.”