Petr Yan prepares for a bantamweight fight against Urijah Faber during UFC 245 (Photo by Steve Marcus/Getty Images)
Petr Yan made a costly mistake with his illegal knee on Aljamain Sterling at UFC 259
UFC 259 had some great fights but one moment got a lot of people talking during the main card.
Aljamain Sterling came into the clash as the challenger for the UFC Bantamweight title and was up against the impressive Petr Yan.
There was a ton of bad blood between the pair before the fight and it spilled out during the fourth round.
Yan had dominated Sterling throughout the rounds and seemed set to keep the title. However, things got a little crazy in the final minutes of the fourth round.
Sterling was down on one knee and Yan was holding his rival’s head. However, he unleashed a crazy illegal knee that knocked Sterling down.
The referee immediately stopped the fight and asked for help from the doctors. Sterling could not continue and Yan was handed a DQ loss.
However, more was to come as Yan lost the title too as Sterling was made the new champion. This was the first time a DQ had led to a title change and not many were impressed with the Russian.
MMA has a few rules and one of them is not using illegal knees. A downed opponent cannot be hit with a knee but that is exactly what Yan did.
Many UFC stars ranging blasted Yan and his team for what happened. Justin Gaethje, Jon Jones, Kamaru Usman, Tatiana Suarez, Lauren Murphy, Dominick Reyes and more reacted to this moment.
Some even questioned Yan as a fighter while some backed him and slammed his coaches for what transpired:
Khabib Nurmagomedov, who was coaching Islam Makhachev at UFC 259, opened up on the issue.
He explained that Yan’s coaches had told him to hit Sterling when the American was down. However, this was crazy advice as Yan would have been disqualified and Sterling too was not pleased as to how he won the title.
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