Sterling Wants A Rematch With O’Malley

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MMA former champion Aljermain Sterling has requested for a rematch with Sean O’Malley after a thunderous showdown that relieved him of his MMA bantamweight championship title on the 19th of August, 2023.

The fight took place in an event called UFC 292 produced by the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) at the TD Garden in Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America.

Sterling disclosed during an interview that he ‘would first and foremost love an opportunity to run that back, just to get some definitive answers.’

The American professional had been taken down by his Irish opponent by a TKO which he thinks was wrongly decided.

A TKO means Technical Knockout in combat sports. It is a term used particularly in boxing and mixed martial arts (MMA), to describe a stoppage of a fight by the referee or the ringside doctor when one of both considers a fighter unable to continue in the game due to any reason.

He claimed that he ‘felt like the fight could’ve still kept going, to be honest”.

“I rolled over to try to come back up, and as soon as he stepped in, I was fine. It was just one of those things. I can’t be mad at the ref. It is what it is.”

‘It definitely sucks. I’m not going to lie about that. There was a lot coming into this fight. The quick turnaround and everything, but I was happy to do it. No excuses,’ Sterling told journalists at a conference held after the contest.

‘It’s 100 per cent what I would like the most. He could go out there and beat me again; I think it just strengthens his case that he’s as good as he says he is. But I think I’ve earned it. I would like to think that I’ve earned my right to get an immediate rematch. Maybe I could do… I don’t want to say a better job because I feel like the guys I trained with were phenomenal, but maybe make it more to have guys that are giving me that look going side to side so that I do a better job of preparing for that. That ultimately was the one thing I was concerned with. It was the one thing that he did a great job with, neutralising my forward pressure where I was like, ‘You know what, let’s play Matador,’ and I was trying to let him in so that I could spin him to the cage. He didn’t really play the game. It’s just one of those things, a couple of tactical things I think I need to look at. I think is a very winnable fight. I think he’s good at what he does. I’m good at what I do.”

By this failure to defend his championship title, Sterling’s 9-match streak of wins were brought to an abrupt end. He had recently unveiled that he had intensions of increasing his weight class in the MMA world by contending with fighters above his present level. One could say this failure could be a pointer at what to fix before considering such contests.