The balloons in the background indicated celebration, but UFC bantamweight Aljamain Sterling hardly smiled as he sat on a couch and explained what had happened before, during and after his UFC 259 disqualification victory.
In the last 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 officer who became commentator John McCarthy; and his UFC colleagues.
The first were the most immediate and clear. Sterling said he received death threats from “Russian doctors” – Yan fans – who compared his response to an illegal knee with that of Alistair Overeem, who was violently knocked unconscious in 2017 by Francis Ngannou.
“I respect that you support your athletes,” said Sterling on the podcast, The Weekly Scraps. “With that said, you are not crazy doctors. Just because I did a CT scan and was acquitted, it doesn’t mean I didn’t have a concussion.
“They are comparing Francis Ngannou vs. Overeem’s knockout, and Overeem got up faster than me. This is ridiculous. Let’s hit the brake, cool your breasts, you are not doctors. “
Then there was McCarthy, who on Sunday implied that he exaggerated the effects of the illegal blow he received from Yan, helped in part by referee Mark Smith’s statement to the doctor next to the cage that his knee would cause a disqualification. McCarthy attributed much of the responsibility to Smith for what he saw as a setup for that result, when the referee called for potential disqualification instead of waiting to see if Sterling would recover.
Sterling’s message: McCarthy was downplaying Yan’s actions, and a disqualification was the wrong choice 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 disqualify, when will you apply them? I would think that a guy throwing a blatant knee intentionally, intentionally, he aligns me with the intention of causing damage, he aligns me to put me out. So, if the defense is going to be, I don’t think Petr Yan knew, really? Do you think he did not know, what, the rules he has been training for years, that he is the world champion, do you think he did not know the rules that he cannot knee a fallen opponent?
“I’m not trying to conflict with you, but when do you disqualify an athlete? I really want to know, since you are the gold standard that everyone should follow, what qualifies for a disqualification in the eyes of ‘Great’ John McCarthy, in his opinion, because I don’t know what else you need to be more crisp and dry than that. Intentional, intentional, damage, the fight. What else do you want?”
Perhaps the most unfortunate in the eyes of the new champion were his colleagues – including several cock weights with an eye on the belt he now holds – who accused him of finding a way out of a fight he was losing.
“Shame on you,” said Sterling. “You always see me giving up or looking for a way out where a guy is putting a rear naked choke in half. … “You are the damn softies. I fought like hell all the time, and I wouldn’t give up on this fight. I was going to take my licks or try to find a way to win like a man. There is no exit button whenever I am there.
“You are the actors, and it can be a reflection of your own spirits or something. Some of you are probably cheaters, anyway. “
There was no action, Sterling said, on the severity of the impact on the fight. As he did not see Yan’s knee coming, he was unable to adjust his position and hit him directly on the head. The effect was worse than a knockout in the training he said he suffered against Zabit Magomedsharipov, which resulted in a dizziness that lasted for several weeks, and another knockout in the octagon in a 2017 fight against Marlon Moraes.
“I was destroyed,” said Sterling. “[UFC President] Dana [White] I saw how I was destroyed. [Yan’s] I saw how I was destroyed. Yan knows that he detonated me. “
Feeling “delirious,” Sterling remembers asking Smith how much time he had, wanting to continue the fight, and a flood of thoughts running through his head while he was lying on the screen, a position he took on because he stopped the vertigo that was feeling.
“Right now, I’m thinking about a lot of things,” said Sterling. “’Dana is not going to give me another chance for the title. The fight will be without competition. Dana will say he was losing the fight in the fourth round, so why use it again, we already know where the fight was going, so let’s move on. ‘Those are all the thoughts that go through my head. I’m going to have to win three or four more fights to fight for a world title – no, ‘I’m going to become the world champion.’ “
Sterling also ruled out standing, he said, because he believed he would not be able to maintain his balance and would certainly be excluded from the fight.
“I know from experience and experience when I watch fights when guys try to get up after being knocked down, concussed or hit in the temple, they are crazy,” he said. “So … I refused to get up to do this.
When he finally signaled he could not continue and was excluded from the fight by the doctor next to the cage, Sterling said he expected a no-contest. But given that the knee Yan threw was considered intentional by Smith, a disqualification was the only possible result.
It was not the result he wanted, he pointed out repeatedly.
“I didn’t ask for the belt,” said Sterling. “I was not trying to get a DQ for a win, or for the championship. I just thought that I would never get my chance again, or it would take a long time to get back to this position. That’s what I was upset about. “
Sterling said he vomited after the fight – a known symptom of a concussion – but attributed this response to a rush of adrenaline, morphine he received on the way to a local hospital after the fight, and his choice not to eat before the fight for five assaults. The doctors released him for a post-fight hospital check-up.
The big mystery for Sterling is how much his nutrition affected his performance. Visibly tired after the first round, he wondered if his choice to leave his stomach empty – something he did on several occasions before competing – left him exhausted.
When he failed to complete a fall with one leg and fell to the ground, he said, “Something is wrong. These are mistakes I never made. Yan was not very strong. I felt stronger than him. He didn’t do anything special other than a whizzer and a wrist controlling my hand. I have defended that and won those positions throughout my career.
“There was something going on that I can’t quite define.”
With the dust settling and the UFC narrowing in an immediate rematch, Sterling said he will work with the UFC Performance Institute on his nutrition to ensure the experience doesn’t happen again. In the meantime, he will perform a check on the previously injured neck and wrist.
For the critics who put the blame on him, Sterling shrugs.
“I can’t control a man for doing illegal shit,” he said. “Hopefully, the next one is the best, and I can handle this [belt] with proud. “
Check out the full video below.