The Conundrum Aljamain Sterling was in after UFC 259
At UFC 259 the Bantamweight title fight between Aljamain Sterling and Petr Yan had an unfortunate ending which really put Sterling in a lose-lose situation. The fight ended with Aljamain Sterling winning the belt via DQ (illegal knee which can be seen below) at 4:29 of round 4.
This was not the ending that fans wanted and it really put Sterling in a bad position when it comes to the perspective of fans. He’s receiving a ton of hate online currently for winning the way that he did. People are saying he faked it, others are saying he’s a bitch for bowing out like that, and many other horrendous comments are being made about him. These comments only got worse after pictures of Sterling celebrating with the belt emerged on social media. Naturally, his family and friends were going to celebrate the fact that this person they love got their hands on UFC gold.
However, let’s play devils advocate and pretend that a compromised Sterling kept fighting just to lose an uphill battle. If Sterling was to take this path which he’s being heavily judged for not doing, then fans would probably rant about how he’s stupid for not taking the easy win. Judging a fighter for not taking an easy win after an illegal knee is something fans did to Anthony Smith after he decided to continue on in his fight against Jon Jones which was a similar situation.
It’s a seriously rough situation for Aljamain Sterling since it seems that there was no way for him to avoid the judgment of fans. The only way he could have really avoided rude comments was if he got back in there and pulled off a miracle to get the win. Getting a win after a knee like that especially considering he was taking a lot of damage before the knee would have been nearly impossible.
Hopefully, the judgement from fans doesn’t get to Sterling too much and he can enjoy his time with the title. Dana White seemed pretty set on making a rematch happen immediately when being interviewed in the post fight press conference.
It’s possible that Sterling could steer into this skid and use the fan judgement to develop a heel like character to sell more PPV’s. Fighters like Colby Covington and Chael Sonnen have found mass success when it comes to making fans hate them. Sterling certainly has a lot of options going forward and appears to have a bright future ahead of him. At the end of the day it doesn’t matter if fans love you or hate you as long as they spell your name right.
