UFC bantamweight champion Aljamain Sterling might be the most active champ when it comes to social media. Sterling loves reacting to trolls and haters online, engaging with them as frequently as with his loyal supporters. Sterling recently explained why in an interview with MMAFighting.
“I don’t care what people say, but I care to defend my freedom and ability to tell them that they’re wrong. So the fact that you’re able to tell me this, and I have the freedom and the luxury to do that, I go out of my way to entertain these guys when I could just leave it alone and ghost it. That’s really how it is.”
Why Aljamain Sterling Fires Back at the Online Trolls
Sterling knows that the means by which he earned his UFC title were controversial, and added fuel to the fire. “I think it’s the first [Petr] Yan fight. I feel like that one weird day of a performance, because I messed up my rehydration and stopped fueling my body where it felt like I was still cutting weight. I literally barely ate anything. I had two pancakes and two eggs, and I hate saying this because it sounds stupid to say out loud, it really does and every time I say it, I feel like a donkey, I really do.
But the facts are the facts, and that’s why I performed the way I did, and I think people just have that image of me in their heads and they can’t get it out. So for me to beat Yan the second time — [people were saying] ‘Yan by murder, Yan by anything he wants’ — and then I go out there and do that to him, they can’t wrap their heads around the fact that this guy just did a complete 180 and dominated a guy who was supposed to win by anything he wanted.
I think because of that first fight, people are still looking at me in that light and they’re saying I’ve had the luckiest title run.” At the end of the day, Sterling remains ambivalent about the “butthurt” Yan fans online. “Maybe I should stop responding to these guys and just go dark. What fun would that be though?
I enjoy the banter going back and forth. As long as I’m not getting emotionally riled up where I’m losing sleep at night and it’s harming my performance and training, it’s not doing anybody any harm.
So it’s like enjoy it. Why do people get so butthurt that I respond? It’s like damned if you do, damned if you don’t.” Would you react in Aljamain Sterling’s shoes? Let us know in the comments.
