“You Almost Tie My Hands Behind My Back” – Emotional Aljamain Sterling Blasts Dana White and Co. After Private Conversation Before Sean O’Malley Fight Gets Released

All is not well in Aljamain Sterling‘s life, as the UFC seems to be in a mood to pick on him even more after his Sean O’Malley saga. To take you down memory lane, Sterling and O’Malley fought back at UFC 292, which saw Sterling drop his bantamweight title to ‘Suga’. A year after the loss, the promotion released certain videos of Hunter Campbell convincing Sterling to take the fight, even though he seemed a bit reluctant. The video is part of a new documentary named ‘Fight Inc: Inside the UFC’ by Roku.

The documentary video seems to have buzzed the former bantamweight champion, as he had to relive the horrifying moments of the fight make-up once again. Regardless, the ‘FunkMaster’ has come forward to add his statement after the reality of his fight came in front of the MMA community. Let us have a look at what the former bantamweight champion has in his mind.

Aljamain Sterling’s first reaction to ‘Fight Inc: Inside the UFC’ by Roku

It is clear that Aljamain Sterling never got the favor of either Dana White or the promotion. He has mentioned how he always gets the short end of the stick and one such incident was the making of UFC 292. From one of the clips of ‘Fight Inc: Inside the UFC by Roku’, we could witness Hunter Campbell convincing Aljamain Sterling to take the Sean O’Malley fight even though he was going through tough after-fight effects from the UFC 288 clash against Henry Cejudo. ‘Aljo’ might have taken the fight under peer pressure, and ended up losing the belt.

In a video on his YouTube handle, Sterling explained how he felt about the revelation – “I know. We’ve seen the video circulating all over social media—it’s a conversation between myself, my management, and Hunter. I wasn’t really excited to see that clip again because it made me relive all those emotions,” said Sterling. “If you look at the series of events, I had just fought. I had a really hard training camp to make that weight cut, a five-round hard fight, and then the night of the fight—this is just the series of events—they don’t make fights the night of the fight, but somehow, for whatever reason, my fight in particular just happened to be made that night.”

Sterling further explained that he did not want to fight O’Malley as he wanted to recover from the Cejudo clash first. “I said I didn’t know what he was talking about, that I had no desire to fight right now. That was the whole thing I was saying: I have to heal up and see how my body holds up.” Later, he dropped a bomb as he stated that he was forced to take up that fight, “I can sit out, but then you’re also telling me, “Well, if you don’t fight, then you don’t fight for almost a year,” and that’s not cool either.”

He further added, “So you almost tie my hands behind my back, but I took the path where I was like, “You know what? If I’m going to roll the dice because my teammates and my managers are all pushing me to do it, I’m going to roll the dice.” Additionally, Sterling called O’Malley’s victory a sham, as he was not in a state to win.

Sterling labels Sean O’Malley’s victory a sham

According to Sterling, whatever happened with him was unfortunate and he is not looking to change it. After his back and forth in the bantamweight division, the former champion has now jumped divisions to fight at featherweight leaving O’Malley to his friend Merab Dvalishvili. Regardless, when a fan pointed out the Hunter Campbell video to ‘Aljo,’ Sterling had only one thing to say.

“O’Malley is very talented but it rubs me the wrong way when he knows he had a handicapped fight. It comes off salty, but it’s the damn truth. He was better THAT NIGHT, but given the right time, I don’t think it’s close. Excited to see him finally fight Merab!” wrote Sterling on X.

Aljamain Sterling is now looking to make some noise in the featherweight division, as his first fight in the division against Calvin Kattar was a successful one. Do you believe Aljo’ has what it takes to be at the top of the featherweight division? State your thoughts in the comments below.