Aljamain Sterling is as good a grappler as Khabib Nurmagomedov. (Photo by Jeff Bottari/Zuffa LLC via Getty Images)
Aljamain Sterling shares graphic hate mail from Petr Yan fans after illegal knee incident
The new UFC bantamweight champion Aljamain Sterling was not happy with the hate mail he has been getting recently.
He won the title against former champion Petr Yan in unfortunate conditions. That, however, does not excuse any of the threats and hate messages that he has been getting.
Warning: graphic content; explicit language and graphic images
And the American shared photos of the messages with his fans. It is too graphic to be shared here but you can check it out here.
Russian MMA fans are known to be a little extreme but racial abuse is unacceptable under any circumstances.
Sterling seemed to find the funny side of things but he made the right call by sharing the abuse he has been getting in order to raise awareness.
All of the aforementioned mess has resulted from the way Yan lost the belt. The Russian was in complete control of the fight, except probably round 3.
And he was winning round 4 comfortably. But then, Yan delivered an illegal knee to the head of ‘Funk Master’.
Sterling went to the ground and was later hospitalized as a precautionary measure by the UFC. The referee deemed the foul as intentional and Yan was disqualified.
Sterling has been accused of faking the injury, but that talk seems futile to begin with. A foul is a foul and Yan himself acknowledged his own mistake after the fight.
“I didn’t mean to throw an illegal strike. I just made a big mistake and paid for it.”
Nevertheless, it looks like fans will get the fight that they wanted to see as Dana White has confirmed that a rematch between the two is very likely to occur.
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