UFC bantamweight champion Aljamain Sterling can’t understand how the judges didn’t award him a 10-8 round for his dominant control of Petr Yan.
Sterling (21-3 MMA, 13-3 UFC) defeated Yan (16-3 MMA, 8-2 UFC) by split decision this past Saturday at UFC 273.
The champion thinks not only should he have at least been given one 10-8 score, there’s no way Yan won Round 1 – despite what John McCarthy and others say.
“I won a clear-cut decision and somehow, some way people are grasping at straws to try to say that this man beat me,” Sterling told MMA Junkie. “It’s fascinating. I got robbed from two 10-8s – at worst, one 10-8 round. Even if someone was crazy enough to try to score that round for Yan in the first, at best the fight’s a draw for him. That’s his best hope. Like, the guy did not win the fight.”
“I felt I won the fight,” Sterling said. “You don’t get 3:54 of control time – the rounds are five minutes. The new scoring criteria for 10-8 rounds are supposed to be near stoppages and control time. And 3:54 of control time, ground-and-pound and submission attempts – how does he get a 10-9 like the first round? How does he get a 10-9 like the fourth round? How does he get a 10-9 like the fifth round? That doesn’t make any sense. There was a huge discrepancy in that round from all the other rounds. Even the third round was just as close with control time.
“I had about six minutes of control time, maybe – I think even more than that. So I should have had two 10-8 rounds. So in my head, going through the scorecards, I’m like, there’s no way. All these judges are crazy to not give me a 10-8 round. Even if they wanted to give him the first round, and there was no way in my head that all these judges give him the first round. I had to have won the first round on one of these guys’ scorecards. I out-struck this guy the entire first round, danced on him with my footwork, and he couldn’t find me.”
