Aljamain Sterling became UFC bantamweight champion in the unlikeliest of ways. He was losing his title challenge against Petr Yan, only for Yan to throw an illegal knee to his head, disqualifying the champ and handing the strap to Aljamain Sterling.
Now, over a year later, they’re set to fight once again, and Aljamain Sterling told his YouTube channel that he knows exactly where it went wrong.
Aljamain Analyzes Where He Went Wrong Against Petr Yan
“I think I messed up the day of the fight. I had a beautiful morning shake up, 20 minutes strong, hard pace. I felt like my lungs would never get tired, my arms, my muscles, everything felt phenomenal. Then, just not eating the way I normally do right after, not putting the fuel back into my body to actually go a 25 minutes pace for what I put out.
The expenditure of energy, it was just way too much for what I put back into my body after having my morning shake out. Anyone who was there that day, they saw, it looked like I was possessed by a demon that morning, so to go from that to what I did that night, was to me, disgraceful, in the sense of that’s not even a glimpse of what I’m capable of.
Especially for how hard I worked, it was very disheartening for myself, because I know how much I put into it and I know that’s not even a fraction of what I can do.” Sterling also blamed the COVID-19 pandemic and how it affected his ability to prepare for the fight of his life.
“It won’t happen again. COVID really messed things up from the aspect of how people normally do things, so to kind of have to make those adjustments without actually having dealt with it before — the Cory Sandhagen fight, they let me do what I wanted.
We were able to report at a certain time as long as we reported back before that time to take our COVID test, we were good, so I got to do everything the same. Leave, go get food, eat with everybody, all that good stuff. This one I just resorted to what the UFC PI team gave me, and I only ate the breakfast.”
Do you think Petr Yan will return to the championship, or will Aljamain Sterling make the statement he has long promised for his first title defense? Let us know what you think in the comments.
