The balloons in the background read celebration, but UFC bantamweight Aljamain Sterling hardly smiled as he sat on a couch and explained what happened before, during and after his disqualification win at UFC 259.
In the latest episode of his video podcast, Sterling answered a variety of critics who questioned his actions this past Saturday: fans of his opponent, Petr Yan; veteran official turned commentator John McCarthy; and his colleagues in the UFC.
The first were the most immediate and sharpest. Sterling said he received death threats from “Russian doctors” – Yan fans – who compared his response to an illegal knee to that of Alistair Overeem, who was viciously knocked unconscious in 2017 by Francis Ngannou.