Former UFC bantamweight champion Aljamain Sterling hasn’t fought since he knocked back younger up-and-comer Youssef Zalal in the main event of a UFC Apex card back in April. But it may be a while yet before “Funkmaster” returns, because he just turned down a fight offer against someone who isn’t even in the featherweight top ten.
Sterling discussed the situation in a recent episode of his YouTube podcast, describing his frustration with being left off the upcoming UFC 333 card in October headlined
by divisional champion Alexander Volkanovski and Movsar Evloev. On the undercard: a fight between No. 5 ranked Arnold Allen and No. 13 ranked Aaron Pico.
“I would have liked to have been offered the fight with Arnold Allen,” Sterling said. “I was offered a fight that was outside of the top 10, and I felt like it didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me. I am ranked fourth in the world right now. I am 37. I don’t know. Sometimes I don’t understand the rhyme or reason for certain things.”
Sterling noted the wealth of great fights getting booked at the top of the featherweight division and questioned why he was haven’t such a hard time getting a good opponent.
“I only got one more shot at this, and I wanna make sure it’s the best shot that I get,” he said. “And if I’m gonna risk it, I wanna make sure I’m risking it for something that that makes sense, you know? I ask to be active, but also, activity comes with a cost. You wanna be active for the fights that make sense for you at the same time too.”
“For me to lose to someone not even in the top 10, rolling the dice? Some people could say, ‘Oh, you can’t think like that.’ Dude, you gotta look at the positives and the negatives. If I were to win, what does that get me? Probably nowhere. I’m in the same exact position. I’m just fighting for a paycheck. But if I were to lose, it puts me down a heck of a lot more spots than I probably should be. So it’s such a hard decision, and I think this is the first fight I ever turned down in my UFC career.”
The UFC doesn’t really mess around with fight offers. If they come to you and offer you a match-up and you turn it down, they usually don’t come back around with another option for four to six months. Despite that, Sterling is hoping that something will fall into place sooner rather than later.
“I think my days of just taking random fights are kinda past me at this point,” he said. “But if there’s a good opportunity and it makes sense and there’s, I don’t wanna say a promise, but there’s something on the back end.”
“It wasn’t articulated to me that there would be an upside to rolling the dice. Because if there is, then, okay, game on. But if there is no upside, then it’s like, yo, dude, I’m not just fighting for a f–king paycheck. I’m fighting for legacy. I’m fighting for history. I hope people could actually understand that, and it’s not it’s not lost on people. Like, ‘Oh, fighters fight.’ Dude, I’m 37. F–king 37.”
During his championship run, Aljamain Sterling gained a reputation from UFC CEO Dana White as being difficult to work with. Whether that’s true or not, he now seems stuck in a position where the big opportunities aren’t coming his way despite success a weight class up. In his last four fights since losing the bantamweight belt, he’s only lost once, and it was a competitive fight to the next featherweight challenger, Movsar Evloev.
“Funkmaster” already accepted a fight down the rankings in his last outing against the tough but relatively unknown Zalal, who was ranked No. 9. At a certain point, you have to wonder who’s being difficult to work with: Sterling, or the UFC?
