Aljamain Sterling got had an extra spark under him at UFC Atlantic City, having found out mentor Matt Serra would be inducted into the UFC Hall of Fame shortly before his fight that night.
Atlantic City, NJ — Part of Saturday night’s main card at UFC Atlantic City, Aljamain Sterling put on a dominant display of wrestling in front of a raucous partisan crowd firmly in his corner. With what amounted to his own cheering section behind him, Sterling got the better of opponent Brett Johns in essentially all areas, but in particular in the wrestling department. Sterling, who would later bemoan the fact that he couldn’t find the finish, did just about everything right. Even his post-fight callout was intriguing, if somewhat unlikely: former bantamweight champion Dominick Cruz.
Hobbling to the backstage area with a noticeably hampered leg (he later revealed he had injured his foot off an inside leg kick), Sterling was in high spirits. “I feel good, man. Back to my old ways, I should say. Dominant wrestling I think,” he said. “I could have capitalized a little better on pushing the pace, but we were a little slippery, I didn’t want to over-commit and fall off the top.”
On finding a finish, something that hasn’t happened for Sterling since 2015, he said that “the finish will come if it’s there. There’s a couple of key moments where if I just had of adjusted a little, I could have got him out of there.”
Sterling, who trains out of Serra-Longo, found out prior to the bout that one of the team’s founders, former welterweight champ Matt Serra, would be inducted into the UFC Hall of Fame later this year. Serra had stopped by backstage earlier in the night, touting the athletic virtues of the young bantamweight star. For Sterling, Serra’s HOF news was added motivation. “I saw that, that was awesome man,” he told Cageside Press after the bout. “What better time to see that than right before my fight. It pumped me up.”
“We got a small team,” he said of the Serra-Longo camp, “but we have a tight team. We’re a family, man. We do things together, we hang out, we push each other, We truly do love each other. I wouldn’t have it any other way. To have mentors like that, I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Later, he added that “I hope to be able to walk the same shoes as Matt Serra, and accomplish some of the things he accomplished in his career.” If he gets the fight against Cruz, he’ll be on the right track.
Check out the full UFC Atlantic City post-fight press scrum with Aljamain Sterling above.
