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Balloons in the background read a celebration, but UFC bantamweight Aljamain Sterling barely smiled as he sat on a sofa and explained what happened before, during and after his win in disqualification from UFC 259.
In the latest episode of his video podcast, Sterling responded to a variety of critics who questioned his actions last Saturday: fans of his opponent, Petr Yan; veteran civil servant turned commentator John McCarthy; and his UFC colleagues.
The former were the most immediate and the clearest. Sterling said he received death threats from “Russian doctors” – fans of Yan – who compared his response to an illegal knee to that of Alistair Overeem, who was brutally knocked out in 2017 by Francis Ngannou.
“I respect the fact that you support your athletes,” Sterling said on the podcast, Weekly Notes. “That being said, you don’t scare the doctors. Just because I had a CT scan and was cleared, doesn’t mean I didn’t have a concussion.
“They compared to the knockout Francis Ngannou vs Overeem, and Overeem got up faster than me. It’s ridiculous. Pump the brakes, cool your breasts, you are not doctors.
Then there was McCarthy, who hinted on Sunday that he had exaggerated the effects of the illegal blow he took at Yan, helped in part by referee Mark Smith’s statement to the cage doctor that the knee would trigger a disqualification. McCarthy placed much of the blame on Smith for what he saw as a setup to that result when the referee called the potential disqualification rather than wait and see if Sterling would recover.
The message Sterling took: McCarthy was playing down Yan’s actions, and a disqualification was a bad decision in the title fight.
“I can understand what he is saying, but when should a fighter or an athlete and a team be disqualified?” Sterling said. “If there are rules to be disqualified, when do you apply them? I would think of a guy throwing a blatant, intentional intentional knee, he lines me up with the intention to do damage, he lines me up to kick me out. So if the defense has to be, I don’t think Petr Yan knew that, really? You don’t think he knew, what, the rules he’s been training for years, which he’s the world champion for, you don’t think he knew the rules he can’t bring to his knees a downed opponent?
“I’m not trying to play with you, but when do I disqualify an athlete?” I just really want to know, since you are the golden standard that everyone should meet, what qualifies for disqualification in the eyes of “ Big ” John McCarthy, in his opinion, because I don’t know what what else you need. be sharper and drier than that. Intentional, intentional, damage, the fight. What do you want more?”
Perhaps most unfortunate in the eyes of the new champion were colleagues – including several bantamweight eyeing the belt he now holds – who accused him of finding a way out of a fight he was losing.
“Shame on you guys,” Sterling said. “You guys have ever seen me quit smoking or looking for a way out where a guy puts a half-ass choke in the back. … “You are the scary guys. I fought my ass the whole time, and I wasn’t going to give up in this fight. I was going to take my licks or try to find a way to win like a man. There is no stop button every time I’m at it.
“You are the actors, and it could be a reflection of your own mind or whatever. Some of you are probably cheaters, anyway.
There has been no interpretation, Sterling said, of the severity of the impact in the fight. Because he didn’t see Yan’s knee coming, he couldn’t adjust his position and took it directly to his head. The effect was worse than a knockout in training, he said he suffered against Zabit Magomedsharipov, resulting in vertigo that lasted for several weeks, and another knockout in the octagon in a fight in 2017 with Marlon Moraes.
“I was screwed,” Sterling said. “[UFC President] Dana [White] seen how I blew myself up. [Yan’s] corner saw how I blew myself up. Yan knows he blasted me.
Feeling “delusional” Sterling remembers asking Smith how much time he had left, wanting to continue the fight, and a flood of thoughts running through his head as he lay on the canvas, a position he held. taken because she had stopped the dizziness he was experiencing.
“Right now I’m thinking about a lot of things,” Sterling said. “’Dana is not going to give me another shot at winning the title. The fight will be without competition. Dana is going to say he was losing the fight in the fourth round, so why should we use it again, we already know which direction the fight was heading in, so we’ll move on. These are all the thoughts going through my head. I’m going to have to win three or four more fights to fight for a world title – not, ‘I’m going to be world champion.’ “
Sterling also ruled out getting up, he said, as he believed he wouldn’t be able to keep his balance and would definitely be left out of the fight.
“I know from experience and I know from watching fights when guys try to get up after being dumped, concussed or hit in the temple, they’re crazy,” he said. “So … I refused to get up to do this.”
When he finally signaled he couldn’t continue and was barred from the fight by the cage doctor, Sterling said he expected a non-competition. But given that the knee thrown by Yan was deemed intentional by Smith, a disqualification was the only possible outcome.
This was not the result he wanted, he said on several occasions.
“I didn’t ask for the belt,” Sterling said. “I wasn’t trying to get a DQ for a win or for the championship. I just thought I was never going to get my shot again, or take a long time to get back to that position. This is what disappointed me.
Sterling said he vomited after the fight – a known symptom of a concussion – but attributed this response to an adrenaline rush, morphine he received on the ride to a local hospital after the fight and his choice not to eat before the fight in five rounds. . Doctors evacuated him during a check-up at the hospital after the fight.
Sterling’s big mystery is how much his nutrition affected his performance. Visibly tired after the first round, he wondered if his choice to leave his stomach empty – which he had done several times before competing – had left him exhausted.
When he was unable to complete an out on one leg and collapsed on the mat, he said, “Something is wrong. These are mistakes I never make. Yan was not too strong. I felt stronger than him. He didn’t do anything special except a hiss and a wrist controlling my hand. I’ve stood up for that and beat those posts my entire career.
“Something was going on that I can’t put my finger on.”
As the dust clears and the UFC boils down to immediate rematch, Sterling said he will work with the UFC Performance Institute on his nutrition to make sure the experience doesn’t happen again. In the meantime, he will have his previously injured neck and wrist checked.
To the critics who blamed it, Sterling shrugs.
“I can’t control a man for doing illegal shit,” he says. “I hope the next one is the best, and I can stand this [belt] proudly.
Watch the full video below.
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