LAS VEGAS – Aljamain Sterling untied the UFC belt from his waist and dropped it on the Octagon mat with a thud. Sterling then got to his knees and rested his head against the canvas.
It was not the behavior of someone who had just achieved a long dream of becoming a UFC champion. But those were the extraordinarily bizarre circumstances of Saturday’s UFC bantamweight title fight at UFC 259.
Sterling won the title by disqualification after 4 minutes, 29 seconds of the fourth round after Yan landed an illegal knee against Sterling’s head. The ringside doctor determined that Sterling, who was visibly rocked by the knee, was unable to continue fighting. Referee Mark Smith judged the violation intentionally, resulting in a disqualification.
Sterling took to Twitter afterward, expressing disappointment with how the fight ended.
“Not the way I ever want to win a fight,” he wrote in his tweet. “It was close, competitive and action packed. I felt the knee was deliberate, especially after the umpire announced I was a downed opponent so I didn’t expect to get hit. Yan’s a bad guy! WE WILL DO IT AGAIN. ! “
Yan also tweeted afterward, apologizing and wished Sterling a “speedy recovery.”
“I did not intend to carry out an illegal attack,” Yan wrote. “I just made a big mistake and paid for it.”
What made the ending even stranger is that Yan was in complete control of the fight. He started to split Sterling in the third and fourth rounds with technical boxing. Sterling, who worked hard to pick up the pace and make Yan uncomfortable, seemed to be running out of steam when Yan came up in the late rounds.
Sterling had a strong start to the fight. He landed in the first lap with two jumping knees against Yan’s head. Yan rallied late on lap one by dropping Sterling with a left hand.
Sterling kept pushing in the second, but Yan was mostly surprised. He stopped just about all attempts by Sterling to take down and was adept at the clinch.
Yan landed some hard left and right hands in the fourth lap, leading to the strange finish.
The judges had Yan for 29-28, 29-28 and 28-29 in the fourth, a round that Yan won convincingly for the illegal knee.
Yan and Sterling came in at No. 1 and 2, respectively, in ESPN’s MMA bantam weight rankings. UFC 259 took place with current coronavirus protocols in the UFC Apex, a facility across from the UFC’s corporate campus.
Sterling (20-3) has now won six consecutive times. The New York native, who did his training camp at Xtreme Couture in Las Vegas, took a first round victory over Cory Sandhagen at UFC 250 in June. Sterling, 31, has a UFC record of 12-3.
Yan (15-2) won the vacant UFC bantamweight title by beating Jose Aldo at UFC 251 last July. The Russian native had won ten in a row, including his first seven in the UFC. Yan, 28, normally trains from Tiger Muay Thai in Thailand, but he moved camp to the American Top Team in Coconut Creek, Florida, this time due to travel inconveniences with COVID-19.