Aljamain Sterling has a math problem for his critics, and I don’t think they can solve it.
In a recent video, highlighted by BJPenn.com and MiddleEasy, the former UFC bantamweight champion looked at Payton Talbott’s win over Henry Cejudo and noticed something. People are giving Talbott credit for it. So Sterling wants the same credit, applied by the same rules, for his own win over the same man. His phrasing was less diplomatic than mine: “if people rate Payton’s win over Henry, then they better rate my win over Henry because f*ck you.”
Crude? Sure. Correct? Also yes.
The Couch Argument Cuts Both Ways
The standard knock on Sterling’s reign, as he laid it out himself, comes in two parts. One is that Cejudo “came off the couch” when they fought. The other is T.J. Dillashaw’s shoulder. Sterling repeated both complaints in a mocking voice, which tells you he’s heard them roughly 10,000 times.
Take the Cejudo piece first. Either Cejudo is a scalp worth something or he isn’t. You can argue he’s diminished, and you can argue he’s still dangerous, but you have to pick one and stick with it. What you can’t do is call him a meaningful win when Talbott beats him and a rusty retiree when Sterling beats him. That’s grading on a curve that only bends one direction, and it bends based on whether you liked watching the guy who won.
That last part is the real engine here. BJPenn.com wrote that Sterling never got much respect as champion, partly because fans didn’t enjoy his style and partly because of the odd endings to a few of his title fights. I’ll take those separately, because they deserve different answers.
The style complaint is the one that drives me up a wall. Sterling is a grappler, and a lot of people watching MMA can’t actually see grappling. They see two guys pressed together and assume nothing is happening, when in fact one of them is winning a hand fight, stripping a grip, or setting up a back take three moves in advance. If your only reaction to a positional battle is to boo, that’s a gap in your viewing, and you shouldn’t use it to rate a champion. Plenty of grappling-heavy fights are dull. Plenty are high-level chess that the casual audience misses entirely. Either way, not enjoying a fight doesn’t count as a case against a title reign.
The Shoulder Was Dillashaw’s Call
The Dillashaw complaint is more reasonable on its face, but Sterling’s account takes a lot of the air out of it. According to Sterling, Dillashaw told people backstage that his shoulder might come out, that he’d pop it back in, that he’d fought with the same injury before, and that nobody should worry about it.
If that’s what happened, the injury was a known quantity that Dillashaw chose to carry into the cage. Fighters walk out hurt constantly. The guy across from them doesn’t get to examine an MRI and turn down the fight. Sterling’s line here was the most sensible thing he said in the whole video: “I could only fight the guy they put in front of me.”
That’s the whole job. You show up, you beat the opponent the UFC gives you, and the asterisks belong to whoever showed up compromised. When a bad weight cut leaves a fighter gassed, nobody docks the winner for it, and an injury the other fighter accepted in advance works the same way.
He Misses 135, But He’s Smart Enough to Stay Away
The more charming part of the video was Sterling sounding almost wistful about his old division. “I just love the division again,” he said, adding that while scanning the rankings he caught himself missing “this playground with these guys.”
He did consider coming back down. His conclusion: “I’d die, I think.” I appreciate a fighter who knows his body well enough to say that out loud. Plenty of guys have chased one more run at a weight class they’d already outgrown, and what you see from them on fight night is a depleted version who fades as the rounds go on. Sterling choosing his health over nostalgia is a better call than most make.
And he’s right that bantamweight is busy. Talbott beating Cejudo is one piece of it. Talbott also made a callout at UFC 332 that went viral and drew a response from Sean O’Malley. Cejudo, meanwhile, spent the post-UFC 332 news cycle calling for AI judging after the Natalia Silva vs. Wang Cong scorecards, which I’ll admit is a position I’m tempted to sympathize with on certain Saturday nights.
Where Sterling Actually Is
Sterling’s present lies at featherweight, where he’s booked against Kevin Vallejos at UFC Qatar. That matchup already has its own side drama. Sterling said the UFC gave him an hour to accept the fight, and Vallejos publicly questioned that claim.
That’s the more pressing test, and it’s the right place for Sterling to be. His bantamweight reign is finished, and the record of it is what it is. He became champion, he beat the people the UFC booked against him, and the critics who discount those wins keep switching the rules depending on who won. If Talbott’s Cejudo win counts, Sterling’s counts. That argument was settled the moment Talbott got his hand raised. The question for Sterling now is whether he can beat Vallejos in Qatar.
