Aljamain Sterling became the first fighter to be crowned UFC champion due to a disqualification at UFC 259, when then-title holder Petr Yan landed a blatantly illegal strike in the fourth round.
Yan was ahead on the scorecard going into the championship round, but blew his chances in his first title defense by dropping a knee on Sterling’s face while his opponent had one knee on the ground.
Top Team American coach Marcos “Parrumpinha” da Matta, who first worked with Yan before UFC 259, revealed that the referee went to their locker room earlier in the evening to study the rules and on exactly focused on the same situation.
“The referee spent a good amount of time explaining the rule,” said Da Matta in an interview with MMA Fighting. “I said [Yan it] no matter where the hand was, he had to worry about the knee. If the knee is on the ground, there is nothing you can do. One of the things we discussed was pushing his head to the ground because Aljamain has an injured neck and keeps hitting.
“The video shows me saying, ‘Just hit, just hit. “Just when someone else said something else. Since I do not understand Russian, I do not know what [the other cornermen] said, but they told me afterwards: ‘Beat him’ in Russian, they did not tell him to throw the knee. ”
With the 19 seconds of the video, MMA Fighting confirmed with a Russian speaker that one of the angles said, “Hit him, hit him.” UFC lightweight champion Khabib Nurmagomedov, meanwhile, claimed that one of Yan’s corners explicitly said, “Yeah, yeah, kick him,” but that could not be independently confirmed.
Several fighters, including Yan, took to social media immediately after the event to criticize Sterling. “Parrumpinha,” himself an experienced coach and veteran MMA fighter, will not judge Sterling on his decision not to come back and walk away with the DQ victory – and the UFC belt.
“It’s just a question he will be able to answer, and only he will know the truth,” said Matta. “He can tell everyone, even his mother and his wife, that he can not go back, but only he really knows whether he could or not. But he lost the battle, he only won the second round, and he knows that Yan has grown and that he was fading.
“Everyone saw that he was tired, he watched several times.” If he really had cardio, he would have kept doing in the second round, but he did not. And since Petr only gets better after each round, I was confident that Petr would KO or TKO him in the final round – at least a 10-8. The battle was won. ”
“Many fighters in Aljamain’s position would probably have done the same,” he continued. ” I will not win the fight, I will stay put and maybe there will be a non-match or something like that, and I will better prepare for another fight. If he could return, of course. If he could not, he could not. Only he knows if he could or not. ”
“Parrumpinha” was pleased with his work in Yan’s camp, which led the champion to avoid all of Sterling’s removal attempts, according to official UFC statistics. The Russian has yet to decide whether he will do his next camp at American Top Team, da Matta said, waiting for a date for the immediate rematch.
According to da Matta, the UFC wanted Yan to stay in the United States instead of flying back to Russia so they could discuss this fight as soon as possible. But the bantamweight talent is expected to return to his homeland later this week.
“He’s done all four rounds with Aljamain and knows almost what to expect in a rematch,” said Da Matta. ‘The first hard blow Petr landed was a knock, a right hand, so I think that will help in the second chance. I would expect an even more dangerous Petr in the rematch. ‘