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Aljamain Sterling had a plan.
Defend his UFC bantamweight title against Sean O’Malley at UFC 292. Vacate the title and go up to featherweight. Beat Alexander Volkanovski and become the featherweight champion.
But as they say: “man plans, and god laughs.”
Sterling was knocked out by O’Malley in the second round of their fight on Saturday night. And Volkanovski shot down the idea of a fight with Sterling on his YouTube channel on Sunday afternoon.
“Gotta feel for ‘Aljo,’ man,” Volkanovski said (h/t MMAFighting). “I mean, what does he want to do? He’s definitely going to want that rematch. That’s a big, big fight. [Him vs. me] that’s not happening. You never know, if he would have had a big win he could have took Ilia [Topuria’s] spot but [he didn’t].”
Volkanovski then continued to praise O’Malley and pointing out his strengths.
“We talked about it in my breakdown, I was saying obviously his (O’Malley’s) distance control and his movement, footwork, is going to be very hard to deal with. He’s so good at fighting on the back foot, coming forward, that was a good example for him coming on the back foot. Aljamain, nothing wrong with that attack he did. Even probably felt like he got his head off center and Sean O’Malley was still able to just make him miss by a millimeter and fire that two. Like I said, his eyes, pretty incredible on top of all that footwork. Credit Sean O’Malley with an incredible finish. Wow.”
“This is more than likely my last fight at 135,” Sterling previously told Ariel Helwani in the lead up to the fight with O’Malley. “There’s a 99.9 percent chance this is my last fight at 135.”
But 99.9 percent means there is a .01 percent chance he remains at 135. And that .01 percent chance may come to fruition after his loss to by O’Malley.