Aljermain Sterling’s featherweight story

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Former UFC bantamweight champion Aljermain Sterling currently stays in the promotion’s featherweight division, and the story of his career continues to unfold.

Sterling lost his bantamweight title to Sean O’Malley months ago in a gloomy title upset that saw the referee end the match in O’Malley’s favour. This was because Sterling looked unable to continue the contest after being pounded by ‘Sugar’.

The ‘Funk Master’ was not happy with the referee’s decision to hand the Irishman a TKO victory, claiming he was still fit to fight and was robbed of his right to compete. Furthermore, he requested for a compensation in the form of a rematch, but this was futile.

Merab Dvalishvili who was Sterling’s friend and team member and was a bantamweight contender was expected to fight Sterling, and thereby make himself O’Malley’s mandatory challenger, but would not fight his friend to UFC CEO Dana White’s ire. Sterling’s way of solving the dreadlock was moving up to a higher weight class as he intended to do in the past, so as to make way for his friend.

Now in the featherweight division, he was expected to fight former featherweight titleholder, Max Holloway, and then go on to face the champion himself, Alexander Volkanovski.

However, Sterling’s coach Ray Longo has revealed that his trainee’s first opponent was likely to be Calvin Kattar.

‘The Holloway fight is not going to happen, that I can tell you,’ Longo revealed in The Anik and Florian Podcast.

‘From my understanding, they have some big plans for Holloway coming down the pipe. I don’t know what the UFC is going to do for [Sterling].

‘He wants the Kattar fight, which would be a crazy fight…I’ve always been a big fan of Calvin Kattar. But talking to Aljo, he wants the fights that will move him towards a title shot.

‘He’s got a couple of ways that he can go with this, but right now at this stage of his career, he wants to fight the best of the best.’

As the introduction of a new chapter in Aljermain Sterling’s career continues, fans think Dvalishvili might join him sooner or later.