Former UFC bantamweight champion Aljamain Sterling has expressed his surprise that his fight against Movsar Evloev won’t be part of the pay-per-view card at UFC 310 on Saturday night in Las Vegas.
At one stage it had been assumed that the match-up would feature on the five-fight PPV line-up, but it now seems that it’s now nestled in the prelims instead, while a featherweight fight between Bryce Mitchell and Kron Gracie lands on the main card.
“I didn’t know if I should have been insulted by the placement on the fight card or glass half-full,” Sterling said on his YouTube channel. “I guess that’s the best way I try to look at everything in life. I get to fight earlier and get to be done earlier. I get to pop open a fresh bottle of Funk Harbor, hang out with the friends and celebrate a big win. I was a little confused by it, of course.
“I guess they have their rhyme or reason for what they do, the UFC brass, and it is what it is. At the end of the day, it’s not my organization. I don’t call the shots. I just go out there and compete, and it’s up to me to go out there and prove these guys wrong that hey, I am a main card fighter. I think people are going to be in for a very big surprise, and the UFC is going to realize, ‘We messed up big time by not putting this on the main card.’”
There’s certainly a case to be made that Sterling should be on the main card, or at the very least be in the featured prelim spot (currently taken by Anthony Smith vs. Dominick Reyes) due to the fact that he’s a former champion who has won 10 of his last 11 fights.
Now up at 145lbs, Sterling is ranked No.9 in that division, while his opponent Evloev is No.5 and is currently unbeaten in his 18-fight career.
Given that they are now taking a backseat to another featherweight fight between the No.13 ranked Mitchell, who has lost two of his last three fights, and the unranked Gracie, who is coming off back-to-back defeats, its does seem to be a bit unfair from Sterling and Evloev’s perspective.
