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‘That Was Scary’- Aljamain Sterling Recalls His First Amateur Fight and How Jon Jones Helped Him

Published 07/14/2021, 9:46 AM EDT

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Aljamain Sterling is one of the best fighters in the UFC right now. The bantamweight champion has an incredible MMA record of 20-3 and is undefeated in his last 6 UFC fights. Sterling became the UFC champion after defeating Petr Yan at the UFC 259 event.

Sterling won that fight after they disqualified Yan because of an illegal knee. Today, Sterling is a UFC champion and is hugely popular throughout the world. However, the fighter had tough beginnings and worked really hard to achieve this success.

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Sterling recently talked about how one of the UFC‘s greatest ever champions helped him in his journey. He said, “When I got to college meeting Jon Jones and seeing that he was doing it. You know, I always had an interest. I never thought it was a real thing, I just thought it was cool. And then after wrestling and seeing the success he was having, I was like I think I can be good at this thing too.”

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Sterling talks about how he was inspired by ‘Bones’ and how he helped him start his MMA career. Talking about the same he said, “So I messaged him and he had me come down to his gym, which was 5 minutes down from where I was now going to school. He was killing it, and for me, that was me starting.”

Aljamain Sterling talks about his first amateur MMA fight

After Sterling started training in Jones’s gym, it didn’t take him long to show his talent. The UFC bantamweight champion competed in his first amateur fight, just after a month, and recently talked about the same.

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He said, “I think I trained for a month and had my first amateur fight after that. I did well, got the finish, I think in the second round. Cut him with the first right hand I threw, that was scary.

“I never busted somebody open like that. The first shot in like the first 15 seconds, split him open. I was like this is a crazy a*s sport, this is wild. And from then I just fell in love with it.”

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Sterling is now all set to face Petr Yan in their much-anticipated rematch. Many people believe that Yan’s loss was not deserved as he lost because of a DQ. Therefore Sterling had recently claimed that he will KO Yan clearly in their rematch.

Who do you think will win in the rematch between Yan and Sterling? Let us know in the comments below.

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Written by:

Paras Pande

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Paras Pande is a UFC author at EssentiallySports who is pursuing his graduation in Journalism and Mass Communication. An ardent follower of the UFC, he has been covering the sport for 2 years now. Before joining the team at EssentiallySports, Paras gained expertise as an MMA writer whilst working with Sportskeeda.
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