The future of the former UFC bantamweight champion, Aljamain Sterling, has been unclear since his title loss earlier this year to Sean O’Malley.
Prior to the upset loss, the 34-year-old mentioned that it would likely be his last fight at 135lbs, as he wanted to go up to featherweight to chase a second belt.
Despite that, after the matter, it seemed as though Sterling was looking to get an immediate rematch with O’Malley. That plan hit a bump in the road recently though, as the UFC announced that O’Malley’s first title defence would be against Marlon “Chito” Vera, at UFC 299.
“Funkmaster” took to his YouTube channel to give the fans an update on where he is at, and what has been recently offered to him.
“So some breaking news, I was offered (Calvin) Kattar, amongst three others. Two of the guys were actually friends so I said I would respectfully like to decline those. One of them was coming off a loss, Kattar was the highest ranking one out of all of them.”
Sterling went on to dissect the possible matchup, and also talked about the thoughts he’s having regarding moving up a weight class.
“I don’t know, I carry the weight well where I feel like I don’t feel that big and I think when I stand next to these 45ers I don’t feel like we’re the same size.
“I’m really not worried about the strength part. I’m just not really looking to go up and take a chance. I don’t mind taking a chance, but I’m not going up to say I’m coming here for second place. If I go up I’m going up to be number one, there’s no half assing this process of going up in weight.”
The former bantamweight champion went on to announce that he is heading to the UFC performance institute in Vegas to do tests to compare his numbers to other featherweights.
“I’m supposed to go to the PI (Performance Institute) this week and do some testing and see what my numbers look like compared to everybody else. I don’t pride myself on being the fastest, strongest most athletic or smartest guy when it comes to sports, but I think I do a pretty good job of showing up on game day and putting it together.
“I just don’t want to hit Kattar and then it goes, he doesn’t feel it. I would love to see what would happen actually happen if I just sit down the way I’ve been hitting pads, and just crack someone for once.”
