“Yes, you will receive the vaccine after that.” That was Dana White’s line to reporters about Aljamain Sterling’s position as main contender before Petr Yan’s planned fight with José Aldo in June. Those words came just after former fighter Serra-Longo smothered prospect Cory Sandhagen at UFC 250.
What a difference a month can make.
On July 12, in Abu Dhabi, at UFC 251, Yan handed Aldo a fifth-round TKO loss to take the vacant bantamweight title, making him the second Russian fighter in MMA history to win a belt. UFC that does not belong to the tournament. You should make a next easy reservation, right? But the days after Yan’s victory have only seen the UFC president apparently withdraw from his support of Sterling’s claim of a chance to win gold.
“Yes, I don’t know,” White said of Sterling’s title shot, scratching his head at the UFC 251 presser after the fight. “I don’t know. We still haven’t pulled the trigger.”
“I don’t know,” he reiterated, when asked if there were other contestants in place of Sterlinig. “We’re not even thinking about it yet. If you asked me about other fighters or any other fight? I’m not even there.
A week later, after Deiveson Figueiredo’s dominant victory over Joe Benavidez for the flyweight title, he refrained that a title shot for Sterling was more of the same. “I don’t know,” Dana White once again told reporters after the UFC July 18 event. “He is in there. He is up there. He is one of them.
Word spread that Marlon Moraes accepted an offer from the UFC to fight Cody Garbrandt in October. It seems like a long way for the UFC to wait for the winner of that fight to face Yan, and there don’t seem to be any other contenders at the moment. So what exactly the UFC is waiting for right now is anyone’s guess.
