Three months after retaining his bantamweight title in a grueling five-round battle against Henry Cejudo at UFC 288 in May 2023, Aljamain Sterling (24-4 MMA, 16-4 UFC) found himself booked to defend his title against Sean O’Malley (18-1 MMA, 10-1 UFC) at UFC 292 in August 2023. However, Aljamain Sterling felt pressured by UFC brass to accept the fight despite needing more time to recover from nagging injuries.
In a recent documentary series titled “Fight Inc: Inside the UFC,” Sterling’s negotiations with UFC executive vice president and chief business officer Hunter Campbell were revealed. Sterling expressed dissatisfaction with how the situation unfolded. He had just fought a tough battle against Cejudo and was dealing with the aftermath when the fight with O’Malley was unexpectedly made.
Aljamain Sterling Opens Up on The Incident
“I know we’ve seen the video circulating all over social media, (the) conversation between myself, my management (Tiki Ghosn), and Hunter,” Sterling said on his YouTube channel. “I wasn’t really excited to see that clip again because I had to relive all those emotions again. It kind of riled me up a little bit because it really did piss me off in that moment of time. Just kind of how everything unfolded.
“If you look at the series of events, I had just fought. I had a really hard training camp to make that weight cut. I fought one of the greatest combat athletes of all time in Henry Cejudo.”
“You’re telling me I can sit out, but then you’re also telling me, ‘Well, if you don’t fight, then you don’t fight for almost a year,’ and that’s not cool either,” Aljamain Sterling said. “So you almost tie my hands behind my back, but I take the path where I was like, ‘You know what? If I’m going to roll the dice because my teammates and my managers are all pushing me to do it, I’m going to roll the dice.’”
As he reflects on his first title fight defeat, Sterling insists that he should get an immediate rematch with O’Malley to seek definitive answers. His focus now lies on future opportunities as he moves on to a new weight division.
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