Recently deposed UFC bantamweight champion Aljamain Sterling believes the boss was happy to see him lose. When Sterling lost the bantamweight title to Sean O’Malley, Sterling claimed that UFC president Dana White was seeing dollar signs with a belt wrapped around the waist of his “golden goose.”
“It was kind of like, I know he’s probably looking at me probably, just…I don’t know what he was thinking. I know he was definitely happy. How could he not be?
Aljamain Sterling Declares Sean O’Malley UFC “Golden Goose”
I mean, the golden goose [O’Malley] won in a fight matchup that he legitimately, I hate saying that because then it sounds like I’m discrediting the guy, but this is the way they say that eight or nine out of 10 times thing, right?”
Sterling claimed that he was given inadequate time to prepare for the fight, blaming his poor preparation for his performance on the night. He had three months after his prior title defense, against Henry Cejudo, which Sterling believed was not enough.
“The one thing with the fight announcement, the only thing I said was, ‘Can I at least get a week to get my exams and my X-rays to kind of just see how I’m feeling?’
Like when [Charles] Oliveira fought, he legitimately said that, and I wasn’t sure if he was saying that to kind of like, f*** with the media, f*** with me, where he’s like, ‘Maybe [Charles] Oliveira has plans for a vacation. I don’t know. I haven’t talked to him yet.’
I was like, ‘Why can’t you do that for me? Why could you not have done that for me?’ Instead, you single-handedly turned the fans on me for whatever reason. I don’t get it. Maybe that’s the plan, to make the fans hate me. Maybe it’s more buys if they hate me.”
Sterling continued, clarifying that he has no personal beef with Dana White. “If there’s anything I’ve said about Dana, like he said, he’s cool in person.
I’m gonna take his words and use it with him. He’s cool in person. But then, I don’t know, it’s like as soon as he gets the mic to say anything about me, I never once heard the guy say anything positive about me.
And that’s the only thing that, if I’m a disgruntled employee, that’s the only thing that it’s kind of a bummer man, because I’ve literally bent over backward and done everything him and [UFC executive] Hunter [Campbell] has ever asked me to do.
I show up, I get in great shape, I fight the best guys in the world. I don’t say ‘No, let me go fight No. 6. No, let me go fight No. 10.’ I fight the next guy in line that they want me to fight, that they think is the killer that’s gonna get the fans excited. And I do it.”
