LAS VEGAS – Aljamain Sterling slipped the UFC belt off his waist and dropped it onto the Octagon mat. Sterling then goes to his knees and puts his head on the canvas.
It was not the behavior of someone who had just achieved a long-held dream of becoming a UFC champion. But those were the extremely peculiar circumstances of the UFC title fight on Saturday at UFC 259.
Sterling disqualified the title at 4 minutes, 29 seconds from the fourth round, after Yan landed an illegal knee on Sterling’s head. The doctor of the ring determined that Sterling, who was visibly torn by the knee, could not fight. Referee Mark Smith ruled the offense intentional, resulting in disqualification.
Sterling then went to Twitter and expressed disappointment at how the fight ended.
“Not like I ever want to win a fight,” he wrote in his tweet. “It was close, competitive and full of action. I felt the knee was intentional, especially after the ref announced that I was an opponent, so I did not expect to be hit. Yan is a bad one. ou! “
Yan then also tweeted and apologized, wishing Sterling a “quick recovery”.
“I did not mean to recruit an illegal strike,” Yan wrote. “I just made a big mistake and paid for it.”
What made the ending even weirder is that Yan was in full control of the game. He started excluding Sterling in the third and fourth rounds with technical boxing. Sterling, who worked hard to increase the pace and make Yan uncomfortable, apparently did not get any more steam while Yan arrived in the late rounds.
Sterling started the fight strong. He laid two hard-jumping knees on Yan’s head in the first round. Yan arrived late in the first meeting by dropping Sterling with his left hand.
Sterling continued to exert pressure in the second second, but Yan was mostly unhindered. He plugged in just about all of Sterling’s removal efforts and was proficient in the clinic.
Yan landed some hard left and right hands in the fourth round and led in the odd finish.
The judges put Yan ahead 29-28, 29-28, 28-29, a round that Yan convincingly won before the illegal knee.
Yan and Sterling ranked No. 1 and No. 2 on ESPN’s MMA movie weightlifting rankings, respectively. UFC 259 took place with coronavirus protocols in effect at UFC Apex, a facility across the UFC’s corporate campus.
Sterling (20-3) has now won six in a row. The New York native, who did his training camp at Xtreme Couture in Las Vegas, claimed a victory in the first round over Cory Sandhagen at UFC 250 in June. Sterling (31) has a 12-3 UFC record.
Yan (15-2) won the vacant UFC bantamweight title by beating Jose Aldo at UFC 251 last year. The Russian native has won ten in a row, including his first seven in the UFC. Yan, 28, usually trains from Tiger Muay Thai in Thailand, but he moved his camp to the American Top Team in Coconut Creek, Florida, due to the COVID-19 travel facility.