Former bantamweight champion Aljamain Sterling may have revealed some insider information ahead of UFC 299’s main event bantamweight title clash on Saturday night as he’s claimed the word is that Marlon Vera hasn’t had a good training camp leading into his rematch with current champion Sean O’Malley.
“I think O’Malley is the more skilled fighter, 100%, but I just think the intangibles like someone’s durability, their heart, and the cardio aspect that people are overlooking – I feel like Chito has that,” Sterling said during his breakdown of the upcoming fight on his YouTube channel.
“The only thing that I’m concerned about is that I’m hearing through the grapevine that he didn’t really have a great camp, from a lot of the guys that train with Chito.
“I don’t know how true that is, so with that said I’m leaning towards O’Malley to get it done. I’m going to say, I don’t think he finishes him, so by decision, maybe split decision [for] O’Malley.
“I’m saying this is Francis Ngannou and Derrick Lewis or Rose Namajunas [and] Carla Esparza 2…I think if you’re Chito, you fight this mother******* boring bro, you can’t fight him aggressive and try to be exciting because he’s too good at what he does.”
It’s hard not know how much to read into that, especially when there’s no real insight into what the problem with his camp has been. The reality is that a lot of fighters have bad camps and come into fights less than 100% fit.
You only need to look back to UFC 298 to see examples of that, with Henry Cejudo reported to have had a bad camp prior to his convincing loss to Merab Dvalishvili, while conversely Brian Ortega suffered a nasty cut in training just a few weeks out from his main event fight with Yair Rodriguez, and indeed also rolled his ankle in full view of everyone during his pre-fight introduction, yet still went on win via submission.
However, if Vera is struggling for some reason then claims like this reportedly leaking from his own people so early on in fight week only puts added pressure on him and may lead to added tension internally within his camp too, so it’s certainly far from an ideal situation.
