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Sour grapes or fair point?
Former UFC bantamweight champion Aljamain Sterling took a shot at Sean O’Malley, the man who dethroned him, in a recent video on his YouTube channel.
The video began with Sterling announcing his featherweight debut at UFC 300 against Calvin Kattar.
But later shifted to a discussion about O’Malley, who many consider one of the sport’s biggest stars. Sterling, however, says the numbers don’t necessarily back that up.
“I was just watching something with my lady and I got the pay per view numbers, and me and her were going through it, and I’m just like, ‘These are the numbers that this guy was trying to say he’s this big PPV star? Oh my god,’” Sterling said on his YouTube channel. “When I saw the numbers I literally sat there — if I had any idea that this is what the numbers would have been, if I could have predicted that this is what it would have been, my ass would have waited and taken my vacation then and geared up to fight now. Because this is ultimately when they said I would be able to fight, January, February, March, because if I didn’t fight in August they wouldn’t have had any other ‘spots.’
“It is what it is. I rolled the dice. I trusted that the bag was going to be this, wow, blow me away, bigger than all the other ones. It wasn’t. So with that being said, it is what it is. I’m still happy I made some extra money. I had a really good year. Life’s good.”
Now, it takes two to tango. So if the UFC 292 pay per view numbers weren’t great, Sterling bears some of that responsibility as well.
It also makes him look a bit silly by claiming that he fought at less than his best because he thought O’Malley was a big draw.
One way or another, we’ll find out when O’Malley defends his title against Marlon “Chito” Vera at UFC 299 in March.