Aljamain Sterling has risked putting himself in the UFC’s bad books by turning down a fight due to wanting a higher ranked opponent.
“I would have liked to have been offered the fight with Arnold Allen,” former bantamweight champion Sterling said on his podcast, but apparently the UFC had other ideas.
“I was offered a fight that was outside of the Top 10, and I felt like it didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me. I am ranked fourth in the world right now. I am 37. I don’t know. Sometimes I don’t understand the rhyme or reason for certain things.”
“I only got one more shot at this, and I wanna make sure it’s the best shot that I get,” Sterling continued. “And if I’m gonna risk it, I wanna make sure I’m risking it for something that that makes sense, you know? I ask to be active, but also, activity comes with a cost. You wanna be active for the fights that make sense for you at the same time, too.
“For me to lose to someone not even in the Top 10, rolling the dice? Some people could say, ‘Oh, you can’t think like that.’ Dude, you gotta look at the positives and the negatives. If I were to win, what does that get me? Probably nowhere. I’m in the same exact position. I’m just fighting for a paycheck. But if I were to lose, it puts me down a heck of a lot more spots than I probably should be. So it’s such a hard decision, and I think this is the first fight I ever turned down in my UFC career.”
Sterling, who is coming off back-to-back wins over Brian Ortega and Youssef Zalal, did however indicate that he could still be persuaded to fight a lesser ranked opponent if the UFC gave him some extra incentive to do so.
“I think my days of just taking random fights are kinda past me at this point,” Sterling said. “But, if there’s a good opportunity and it makes sense and there’s, I don’t wanna say a promise, but there’s something on the back end.
“It wasn’t articulated to me that there would be an upside to rolling the dice. Because if there is, then, okay, game on. But if there is no upside, then it’s like, yo, dude, I’m not just fighting for a f–king paycheck. I’m fighting for legacy. I’m fighting for history. I hope people could actually understand that, and it’s not it’s not lost on people. Like, ‘Oh, fighters fight.’ Dude, I’m 37. F–king 37.”
