Aljamain
Sterling was admittedly at somewhat of a crossroads in his
career going into his UFC
300 clash against Calvin
Kattar on Saturday.
Sterling made his featherweight debut against the New England
Cartel standout, earning a dominant unanimous decision victory with
a stifling grappling display. While “Funk Master” nullified all
offense from Kattar, many believe he would have done better to
aggressively seek a finish. The former bantamweight champion
insists he is in the game to be on top of the ladder, which made
him consider retirement leading up to the fight in case of a
loss.
“I think if I got my ass completely kicked by Calvin Kattar, I was
probably done. And no one knew about that, I didn’t share those
sentiments with anybody. Even my fiancé. It’s just one of those
things,” Sterling said on “The MMA Hour”.
“I mean, I mentioned it to her like, ‘Well if I can’t beat him, I
don’t know.’ But I didn’t really go into detail what that actually
meant… My internal thoughts were, ‘This guy is good, but if I’m
claiming to be who I think I am and who I want to be, man, I feel
like I should be able to beat a guy like this. And if I can’t, then
how am I ever gonna beat a guy who’s sitting on top of the throne
right now?’”
With a walkaround weight of 165-168 pounds, the cut to bantamweight
was always grueling for Sterling. While the cut to featherweight
was better, Sterling claims it was harder than he expected. When he
almost wanted to give up, Sterling focused on his end goal of
doubling his paycheck and moving closer to title glory. The New
Yorker further admits that financial stability sometimes makes him
question his motivation to fight.
“It was definitely still challenging, still hard. I was actually
surprised, I thought it was going to get a little bit easier. But
there was parts in there where I was just like, ‘I’m just over
cutting weight. There’s just so many other things I’d rather be
doing right now,’ said Sterling.
“Then I’m like, ’OK, think about the end goal. The end goal – we
win this fight, we get paid well, we get paid regardless but we
win, we get paid double time. And we win this fight, we get
ourselves an opportunity to possibly put our name back in the
conversation for a title again.’ So it’s all about perspective,
what is your why? And I keep it real, man. Some of these guys, they
try to make it like a show pretending like, ‘Oh, I’m so bulletproof
this’ and like, we all have these thoughts that go through our
heads and it’s just like, ‘What the heck am I still doing here? I
got a couple million in the bank. Why am I still doing this?’ You
know what I mean? So, these thoughts happen. They’re normal. But I
love competing, and I think that’s what drives me to want to keep
going and trying to achieve bigger and greater things.”
