Aljamain Sterling doesn’t necessarily disagree with Sean O’Malley when it comes to how the UFC picks its pay-per-view headliners. He just doesn’t see that as his fault.
“That’s on the UFC to put together a fight card that’s worthy of customers wanting to pay a $70 price tag,” the undisputed champ said recently on The MMA Hour. (UFC broadcast partner ESPN recently raised the UFC pay-per-view standalone price to $74.99. )
O’Malley drew headlines when he said undisputed champ Sterling and interim titleholder Petr Yan weren’t big enough stars to carry UFC 272 following the scratch of featherweight headliner Alexander Volkanovski vs. Chan Sung Sung, which prompted the promotion to move the matchups to UFC 273, with the bantamweights slotted as the co-main event.
Headlining UFC 272 is now a rare fight between Jorge Masvidal (welterweight) and Colby Covington (welterweight). This lends credibility to O’Malley’s claim.
Sterling dismissed Sterling’s initial statement as inappropriate given his competitive record, which was 2020 marred by Marlon Vera’s high-profile defeat, but features many favorable matchups.
“O’Malley’s going to do what O’Malley does, which is just talk,” Sterling said. He talks big, but we find that he is a lot more talk than bark. The last time he tried to bite off more than he can chew, what happened? He did the broke leg dance.
” I don’t even know the name of his kick, and yet, it had an impact. And guess what, you had your shot, and you blew it. We all get opportunities, you had an opportunity, and you blew it.
” The UFC did not offer me the opportunity to fight in custom-made matches when I was first introduced. I fought. My third UFC fight, I fought a guy who was ranked sixth in the world in Takeya Mizugaki, and ever since then, I have not left the UFC’s top 10 of ranked contenders and guys that were within the top 10 and top five.”
Sterling is used to receiving criticisms from both inside and outside of the octagon. Since a disqualification win over Yan that made him bantamweight champion, he’s endured an army of armchair critics who have questioned his every move.
To give any opinion weight, Sterling said O’Malley needs to fight a highly-regarded opponent like Ricky Simon, Brian Kelleher, or his teammate, Merab Dvalishvili. But he also agreed that names do matter when UFC scheduling hiccups arise, and at this point, few matchups can carry a card on their own.
“I think that’s pretty black and white — you can’t just rely on one fight,” Sterling said. “I don’t know a lot of people who will pay $70 just to watch one fight. I want to watch good fights. It’s not enough to watch just one fight. When it comes to boxing, they just have Canelo [Alvarez] versus whoever. I’m paying to pretty much see Canelo, but that’s a big price tag to pay to see one fight, and you can’t justify doing it for that and for this.
” It should be a bit more [about] about the metrics. I’m pretty sure that if it was just Sean O’Malley and a bunch of other guys that are up-and-coming and not really any type of notoriety, people aren’t paying $75 to watch Sean O’Malley fight, either. .”
I’m not sure what he is talking about.
