Petr Yan Slams Aljamain Sterling For Acting His Way To The Title
Petr Yan is not happy after losing his bantamweight title in controversial circumstances at UFC 259.
The former champ was dominating Aljamain Sterling through four rounds in the first title bout of a stacked pay-per-view event.
Yan cost himself the fight and the championship when he landed an illegal knee as Sterling was down on the mat
After much confusion, referee Mark Smith eventually disqualified Yan and the title was handed to Sterling – who has expressed his unhappiness at winning the belt by default.
The Russian has blasted Sterling since the fight, claiming he was faking the severity of his injury in order to win by DQ.
In an interview with Ariel Helwani, Yan doubled down on those claims.
“I was trying to understand what was going on,” Yan told Helwani via a translator. “Then I saw the tape and I saw in this moment the doctor come into the cage and the referee talking to the doctor and referee saying to the doctor that this knee was illegal and he’s going to disqualify me and Aljamain was just sitting right next to them. He was hearing what the referee was saying to the doctor and after that we can see Aljamain start to feel worse and worse every second. So he started to lie on the ground and I don’t know what happened…
“You can see, the first few moments after the knee landed he was trying to recover,” Yan added. “But then, I feel like he started to exaggerate, he started to (be) acting because he heard what the referee said. I feel like he could have continued. It was his choice not to but I feel like he could have continued and what happened after, first he claims he doesn’t remember what happened then he starts explaining what happened. Then he’s doing an interview after the fight, telling what was going on so to me it’s obvious he was very aware of what’s going on, of what he’s doing and it was his decision to not continue to get a disqualification win.” (Transcribed by MMA Fighting)
Do you agree with Petr Yan? Did Aljamain Sterling act his way to the title?
